WITH the resignation of Justice P.D. Dinakaran, the Chief Justice of the Sikkim High Court, on July 29, the removal proceedings initiated against him under the Judges (Inquiry) Act have become infructuous. Justice Dinakaran, who was due to retire in May 2012, sent in his resignation letter to President Pratibha Patil and a copy of it to Chief Justice of India S.H. Kapadia.
Justice Dinakaran's resignation, ahead of the proceedings of the three-member inquiry committee set up by Rajya Sabha Chairperson Hamid Ansari, came as a surprise.
The Rajya Sabha admitted a motion moved by Members of Parliament seeking his removal on December 27, 2009, and its Chairperson on January 15, 2010, set up a panel headed by Justice V.S. Sirpurkar of the Supreme Court to inquire into the charges against him.
Justice Sirpurkar recused himself from the committee in September 2010. Later, he was replaced by Justice Aftab Alam of the Supreme Court.
The immediate provocation for Justice Dinakaran's resignation appears to be the decision of the Alam Committee to go ahead with the proceedings without awaiting the Supreme Court's decision on his petition challenging the entire process of inquiry.
He had challenged the composition of the committee, which included P.P. Rao, a senior advocate in the Supreme Court, as its member. He alleged that Rao was biased against him.
The Supreme Court accepted his challenge to P.P. Rao's continuance on the committee and directed that he be kept out of the panel.
The Vice-President then appointed Professor G. Mohan Gopal, Director, Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies, Rajiv Gandhi Foundation, New Delhi, in place of P.P. Rao. The third member of the panel was J.S. Khehar, Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court.
According to Justice Dinakaran, the charges against him were framed by the committee in which P.P. Rao was a member. Even if Rao was subsequently substituted, the charges framed by the committee with him as a member still stood. What fairness can I expect from the inquiry? Framing of charges is the heart and soul of any inquiry. If that is biased, then the entire proceedings get vitiated, he said.
In his resignation letter to the President, he said: I have a sneaking suspicion that my misfortune was because of the circumstances of my birth in the socially oppressed and underprivileged section of society. Integrity of members of these communities who attain high office is always baselessly questioned through innuendo, sneering and spreading false rumours, while the privileged are treated by the vested interests as embodiment of all virtues.
When the Supreme Court's collegium recommended in 2009 Justice Dinakaran's elevation from the post of the Chief Justice of the Karnataka High Court to that of a Judge in the Supreme Court, the Chennai-based Forum for Judicial Accountability brought to the notice of the collegium that he had allegedly indulged in land-grabbing in Tamil Nadu's Tiruvallur district.
The collegium then dropped the proposal but found him suitable for transfer to the Sikkim High Court. This was despite the fact that the Tiruvallur Collector in his report to the then Chief Justice of India, K.G. Balakrishnan, had said that Justice Dinakaran had indeed occupied 197 acres of government land.
Justice Dinakaran described the allegations of land-grabbing against him as a figment of the imagination and said that the Survey of India, which inquired into the allegations, had found him innocent.
However, since the Rajya Sabha probe panel has been examining serious charges of impropriety, misconduct and accumulation of unaccounted wealth against him, observers are of the opinion that his resignation should not result in his immunity from prosecution.
V. VenkatesanCOMMents
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