New Delhi: Punjab and Haryana High Court judge, Justice Rajbir Sehrawat, whose “unnecessary” remarks on a Supreme Court ruling were expunged earlier this week by the apex court after a bench led by Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud took suo motu cognisance, has courted controversy before.
In one of his previous orders, he had expressed similar resentment against a higher bench of his own court for passing what he described as a “sundry order”.
In an order passed on 17 July, Justice Sehrawat had criticised the Supreme Court for staying contempt proceedings against the Haryana government and said that there was a “tendency on the part of the Supreme Court to presume that it was more ‘supreme’”.
Before this, in May, he had made critical remarks about his senior judges while dealing with another contempt case against the Haryana government, when he took exception to a division bench (two-judge) order asking him not to proceed with the case.
In his three-page order, Justice Sehrawat had observed that the court having jurisdiction to hear contempt cases does not draw its powers to consider and decide contempt petitions from any “authorisation or concession conferred upon it by any division bench”.
The contempt court, per se, has that authority and powers according to the Contempt of Courts Act, and more widely, under the provisions of the Constitution of India.
Therefore, Justice Sehrawat had opined that a division bench, while hearing an appeal arising out of a single judge’s order, could not restrain a contempt court from hearing a contempt case.
A division bench is the one that comprises two judges and is headed by the senior judge. An appeal against a single-judge bench order lies before a division bench.
A division bench can stay the operation of a judgment under challenge, as an ad-interim measure, but “hardly has any jurisdiction to pass an order” to say that the contempt court shall not proceed with the matter. Justice Sehrawat had, therefore, declared the division bench’s direction as invalid.
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The ‘sundry’ order
The direction to Justice Sehrawat was issued on 10 May, when the division bench was hearing Haryana government’s appeal against a final judgment delivered by a single judge of the high court in 2022. Filed by a pump operator in 2014, the case dealt with the regularisation of the petitioner’s services in terms of the state policy.
Pronounced in December 2022, the judgment had allowed the pump operator’s petition and directed Haryana to give him all consequential benefits from February 1996 onwards. A three-month deadline was fixed for the state to comply with the directions.
However, on account of non-compliance, contempt proceedings were initiated against the Haryana government and its officials. Meanwhile, the state filed an appeal against the order and got a stay on its operation.
Justice Sehrawat, who was holding the contempt roster since January this year, had heard the case for the first time on 14 May. It was then that the Haryana government advocate brought to his notice the division bench order.
Claiming that such orders have become a trend and lawyers were taking advantage to stall contempt hearings, the judge had said that it was “imperative” for him to “dilate upon the issue”.
He noted: “Had this order of stay of contempt proceedings in an appeal against the writ court order been a stray incident in a single case, this court, as a matter of judicial comity, would have followed that order”.
He added, “However, the parties in different cases have been repeatedly producing such or similar orders passed by different division benches, resulting in increasing unnecessary pendency of contempt petitions.”
Justice Sehrawat had also observed that the division bench’s direction in the contempt proceedings before him was passed even though no aspect of it was under challenge before it. The judge had quoted a 2018 judgment of the Supreme Court, which had pointed out that in an intra-court appeal in the high court, a single bench is not a court subordinate to the division bench.
Therefore, he took the view that the division bench has limited power to only correct a mistake, if any, committed by the single bench and pass its own judgement.
He said that it does not have any authority to pass “sundry orders” in matters or aspects that are not even under challenge before the division bench, “by arrogating to itself the roving and omnipresent authority and jurisdiction”.
‘Hierarchy should be respected’
Members of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Bar Association told ThePrint that Justice Sehrawat has often been vocal with his comments over “unnecessary” intervention by higher benches in contempt cases. However, until the May order, he had made such remarks only orally.
Due to retire in October this year, Justice Sehrawat was appointed as a judge in 2017. Lawyers quoted above vouched for his integrity, but conceded that he transgressed the boundary with his inappropriate language in the order on the Supreme Court.
“He may be legally correct in observing that the Constitution does not discriminate between a High Court and a Supreme Court judge. But in practical terms, a hierarchy is followed in the institution and that should be respected,” said a senior advocate from the Bar.
Defending his observations, the counsel also argued that the root cause for his outburst could be the delay that occurs in the disposal of cases due to higher court’s intervention. In both the orders, the judge highlighted this aspect. “He may be correct statistically, since he was holding the contempt roster,” another lawyer added.
Soon after the Supreme Court Tuesday took suo-motu cognisance of Justice Sehrawat’s order, the contempt of court roster was withdrawn from him with immediate effect.
According to a notice uploaded on the high court website, partial modification was made to the roster that was issued in July this year. The contempt of court jurisdiction has now been marked to the single bench of Justice Harkesh Manuja.
Hailing from village Jagsi in Haryana’s Sonipat district,, Justice Sehrawat served as the senior deputy advocate general of Haryana between 2001 and 2007. He practiced for 31 years in the high court before being elevated as a judge there.
(Edited by Mannat Chugh)
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