WHEN the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, Justice V.K. Tahilramani, was transferred to the Meghalaya High Court and she decided to resign, the legal fraternity in Tamil Nadu rose in solidarity. It was felt that the transfer was “arbitrary”.
Lawyers boycotted court proceedings across the State on September 10 and 11. The best legal minds issued detailed statements in support of Justice Tahilramani, who was to retire in October 2020. What disturbed the legal fraternity was the way the Supreme Court collegium treated her request to reconsider her transfer. She received the Memorandum of Procedure from the apex court on August 28. She sent her representation on September 2.
The collegium stood by its decision, prompting her to send her resignation to the President and other appropriate authorities. From September 9, she abstained from court proceedings. Subsequently, a note from the Madras High Court said that all urgent motions and admissions in public interest litigation (PIL) petitions relating to the rights of women and children filed on or after January 1, 2019 (all stages), writs on unauthorised constructions and encroachments, and civil revision petitions relating to the Debt Recovery Tribunal and the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal had been posted to the Division Bench of Justices Vineet Kothari and C. Saravanan in Court 2.
The quick developments made the State Law Minister C.Ve. Shanmugam call on Justice Tahilramani at her residence. The Minister refused to share with the media the details of his 15-minute meeting with her, and no official communiqué on the meeting was issued. Informed sources in the Law Ministry told Frontline that the Minister asked the Chief Justice to reconsider her decision and that she politely declined to do so.
Lawyers of the Madras High Court in Chennai and Madurai staged demonstrations outside the High Court on September 9 urging the collegium to withdraw its decision. The Madras High Court Advocates’ Association (MHAA) with 1,800 members in Chennai and the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court Bar Association (MMBA) convened extraordinary general body meetings of their associations to express their solidarity with the Chief Justice. On September 10, advocates, including those working in the subordinate courts, boycotted court proceedings.
The rights activist and senior advocate Henry Tiphagne, based in Madurai, said the protest by the lawyers was meant to convey to the collegium that its decision was not acceptable. The Madras High Court Advocates Association president, Mohanakrishnan, told the media that the transfer was an “undemocratic and undignified” decision.
The senior advocate R. Vaigai said the transfer reeked of gender bias. “The Chief Justice is the number one in seniority and her transfer would affect the administration of justice in Tamil Nadu,” she said. She and a section of lawyers sent a representation to the Chief Justice of India, Justice Ranjan Gogoi, asking him to reconsider the transfer. Justice Tahilramani, the representation claimed, was transferred unceremoniously from a chartered High Court to a smaller one. “It is nothing short of punishment and humiliation,” it stated.
Brinda Karat, Polit Bureau member of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), said the transfer of Justice Tahilramani and her reported resignation “is deeply disturbing and shocking”. She said in a statement that “there are few women judges at this level and the treatment meted out to her is insulting and humiliating not just to her but to women in general”.
Senior lawyers N.G.R. Prasad and K.K. Ram Siddhartha of the Madras High Court pointed out that the response of the collegium that it would disclose the reasons for the transfer of Justice Tahilramani came after strong protests against the unfairness of her transfer. “The reasons, if any, should have been disclosed to the person concerned, and only after knowing her views should the collegium have decided on the transfer,” they felt.
They said: “A lot has been written on the question of the legitimacy of her transfer. Though all courts are same, the transfer is not the same. It is decided on different considerations. Justice A.K. Mittal, a senior judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, was not appointed as the Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court. His junior, Justice Surya Kant, was elevated and posted as the Chief Justice overlooking his claim.
“But in the case of Justice Tahilramani, she was the senior-most High Court judge in the country. When a vacancy arose, she was elevated and posted as the permanent Chief Justice of the Madras High Court. Both are chartered High Courts with a lot of prestige. In April 2019, Justice Mittal was elevated and posted as the Chief Justice of the Meghalaya High Court.... Transferring a Chief Justice of a smaller court to the Madras High Court and sending Justice Tahilramani to Meghalaya now is a clear case of arbitrary exercise of power.”
The issue, they said, brought to mind the grievances expressed by four senior-most judges of the Supreme Court at a media conference in January 2018 “to convey that the then Chief Justice of India [Dipak Misra] was ignoring seniority when it came to assigning important cases”. “This argument would equally apply when the principle of seniority is ignored to the point of humiliating a person when he or she is transferred from a chartered High Court to a court consisting of only three judges,” they argued.
They quoted Justice Kurien Joseph, who retired from the Supreme Court in 2018, as saying that compassion was an important principle of the Constitution. “When Justice H.R. Khanna was overlooked for the post of the Chief Justice of India because he was the sole dissenter in the ADM Jabalpur case, he resigned. Justice Tahilramani, too, has acted with equal grace. It is now up to the collegium to consider and reverse its decision to restore the damage that has been done and uphold the dignity of a person who was holding high office,” they pointed out.
‘Overreaction’
Justice K. Chandru, a former judge of the Madras High Court, told Frontline that it was an “unjustifiable act” to protest against a routine transfer. “The overreaction by the Bar in going on with the work stoppage against the transfer is totally unwarranted. The members of the Bar, instead of understanding the full implications of the transfer, have condemned the collegium’s decision,” he said.
“AIDWA [All India Democratic Women’s Association] has jumped into the fray by stating that the decision was vindictive. A section of the lawyers has certified that all was not well with the collegium,” Chandru said. He said the Registrar General of the Supreme Court had promptly issued a statement that the decision of the collegium was unanimous and there were enough inputs for taking the decision. “It was also stated that, if necessary, the Supreme Court would not hesitate to give the reason for her transfer. I wish they come out with the real reason so that the build-up around the decision is demolished,” Chandru said.
“In the absence of any government role in this regard to state that Justice Tahilramani was transferred because of her decision [when she was in the Bombay High Court] in the Bilkis Bano case, it is not acceptable to claim that the Bharatiya Janata Party government was after her blood. It was after that verdict that she was made the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, the position she occupied for more than 11 months,” he pointed out.
Justice Chandru said the argument that she was transferred to a smaller court was unacceptable. “India has 25 High Courts of different sizes. Ever since the policy of having the Chief Justice from outside the State was introduced, accommodating judges from one State in another has become a difficult exercise. Although the Madras High Court claims to have equal strength and tradition with the High Courts of Bombay and Calcutta, in the past three decades not one judge of the Madras High Court has been posted as Chief Justice of those two chartered High Courts. Similarly, Justice A.K. Mittal, the Chief Justice of Meghalaya, hails from the Punjab and Haryana High Court, having a sanctioned strength of 86 judges,” he said.
“It only shows that people who are protesting have no justifiable reasons to take extreme actions like court boycott, especially when the decision was taken by five senior judges of the Supreme Court and there are no allegations of any ulterior motives. As held in the E.P. Royappa case, the higher the post, the allegations of mala fide in matters of transfer calls for credible material. Now that Justice Tahilramani has resigned, the protesting lawyers must get back to work since the Madras High Court has nearly six lakh pending cases,” he said.
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