Advocate Reepak Kansal, having previously moved the court in a petition to direct the registry to not to give preference to the cases filed by influential lawyers/ petitioners, law firms, etc in matters of listing, on Wednesday alleged further "harassment" at the hands of the registry in its listing of the disposed off matter before the court.
His plea having been dismissed by a bench headed by Justice Arun Mishra on July 6 with costs of Rs. 100, Kansal advanced before the bench of Justice A. M. Khanwilkar on Wednesday that he had subsequently filed an application for modification of the judgment which was listed on August 31 and was disposed off.
"Then, I filed a complaint against the Secretary General on September 2. Now they say that the matter was examined and it was made out that 'inadvertently link for Video Conferencing was provided to petitionerÂ-inÂ-person of Virtual Court No. 1 instead of giving link of Virtual Court No. 3'. Hence, the Applications above mentioned are again listed before the Court", he argued.
"So your writ petition was disposed off. The subsequent application has also been disposed off. What do you want now?", inquired Justice Khanwilkar.
"There are no SC Rules which say that a disposed off matter could be listed before the court! This has been listed only to waste the court's precious time! The correct VC link was intentionally not provided to me! And immediately after the matter was over, I was given the link! My application could not have been disposed off by some other bench! The court had no power to change the order!", contended the counsel.
"You are right. The review can be done only by the same bench...But this has happened so many times, even in this court, when the link is not connected...even 2 minutes back there was a technical problem...", said Justice Khanwilkar, asking now that the application is already disposed off, what Kansal wanted.
"I don't know why this matter is listed today! I didn't approach this court for anything! Nothing more is required! The Registry has forced me to appear! The Court should ask this question of the Registry why the matter is listed?", urged Kansal.
"I am a regular petitioner. I face discrimination and harassment at the hands of the registry. I had a prior engagement today. I had to go out. I couldn't because I was made to appear here! The Registry wasted the precious time of the court", he pressed.
"That is your perception. Why are you going to that extent? We'll close the matter and leave it at that. We'll say nothing more is required to be done so that papers may be consigned to the record", observed Justice Khanwilkar.
