New Delhi: Justice Yashwant Varma of the Delhi High Court, under fire after allegations that unaccounted cash was found at his residence, gave a ruling in 2023 that curtailed the powers of the Enforcement Directorate (ED). He also delivered other significant judgments, including on service charges on restaurant bills and misreporting on the Delhi excise policy matter.
ThePrint earlier reported that according to sources in the Supreme Court, ‘jute sacks full of cash’ were allegedly found at the outhouse of the judge’s official bungalow last week by a team of firefighters called to put out a fire that broke out there.
Justice Varma was not in town at the time of the incident.
In light of this, the Supreme Court Collegium, led by Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna, is considering his transfer back to his parent high court, Allahabad.
CJI Khanna has also sought a report from Delhi High Court Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya, the first step towards the in-house enquiry procedure. Further action would depend on its findings. The report is expected later Friday.
In January 2023, the single-judge bench of Justice Varma ruled that the ED cannot probe any offences other than money laundering under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) and that it cannot assume that a predicate offence has been committed. “The predicate offence has to be necessarily investigated and tried by the authorities empowered by law in that regard,” he said in the 111-page judgment passed on 24 January, 2023.
Section 30 of the PMLA contains the Schedule to the principle act and deals with the concept of predicate or scheduled offences. The first three parts of this Schedule, parts A, B, and C, include a wide range of specific offences across various statutes, such as the Indian Penal Code, the Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act, and even the Copyright Act. These offences are called scheduled or predicate offences. To be accused of money laundering under the PMLA, the offence has to be linked to one of these offences.
Service charge on restaurant bills
On 20 July, 2022, Justice Varma put the Central Consumer Protection Authority (CCPA) guidelines, which said restaurants and hotels should not automatically levy service charges on the bill or collect it from consumers under another name, on pause, effectively nullifying them. He was hearing pleas filed by the National Restaurant Association of India and the Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) challenging the order.
Justice Varma said that such service charge must be prominently displayed on the menu.
“The members of the petitioner association shall ensure that the proposed levy of a service charge in addition to the price and taxes payable and the obligation of customers to pay the same is duly and prominently displayed on the menu or other places where it may deem to be expedient,” he ruled, adding that this does not apply to takeaway.
However, in September 2023, Justice Pratibha Singh overturned this order to replace the term “service charge” with “staff contribution”, while adding that such contribution can not be beyond 10 percent of the entire bill.
This essentially meant that all FHRAI-associated restaurants, eateries and hotels, would have to clarify on their menus in bold that no tips have to be given to the staff once the contribution is paid.
Misreporting excise policy matter
In November 2022, Justice Varma also pulled up certain media houses for alleged misreporting in relation to the trial in the Delhi excise policy case, where several Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leaders are named as accused. Acting on a plea by AAP leader and communication-in-charge Vijay Nair, who was also accused in that case, he sought responses from Zee News, India Today, Republic TV and Times Now.
By way of his plea, Nair had told the court that sensitive information was leaked into the public domain by federal investigative agencies.
The court asked the News Broadcasters & Digital Association (NBDA) to call its member media companies and inquire about the sources of the leaked information, and other similar information. The judge also remarked, “We just want to clear and substantiate that none of these news broadcasts are given by the ED or CBI.”
In doing so, he directed the federal agencies to furnish details of all press communications made by them about Nair and others accused in the case.
Journey to Delhi High Court
Justice Varma was born on 6 January, 1969, in Allahabad, Uttar Pradesh.
He pursued a graduate degree in Bachelor of Commerce (Honours) from Delhi University’s Hansraj College. After completing his law degree from the Rewa University in Madhya Pradesh, he enrolled as an advocate on 8 August, 1992.
During his time as an advocate at the Allahabad High Court, his practice ranged from constitutional matters to labour-related ones. Besides this, he also delved into industrial legislation, corporate laws, taxation and other similar legal branches.
He served as the Special Counsel for the Allahabad High Court from 2006 till his elevation to the Chief Standing Counsel for the state of Uttar Pradesh—a post where he served from 2012 to 2013. Soon after, he was designated as a senior advocate.
On 13 October, 2014, he became the additional judge of the Allahabad High Court, following which he took oath as the permanent judge only two years later, on 1 February, 2016.
Nearly five years later, he was appointed as judge of the Delhi High Court on 11 October, 2021.
(Edited by Sanya Mathur)
Also Read: ‘We are not trash bin’: Allahabad HC bar association on Justice Yashwant Varma’s transfer
Does the article mean to point out Justice Varma has been made a scapegoat?
And therefore he was held up as a saviour of democracy by the Opposition. He became the ideal judge – a man of integrity who “stood up” to the “authoritarian regime” of Modi.