The Supreme Court of India will constitute a special bench to hear Justice Yashwant Varma’s appeal challenging the findings of a three-judge in-house inquiry committee. The committee recommended his removal from office after a significant amount of unaccounted cash was discovered at his official residence in Delhi following a fire on March 14.
Chief Justice of India BR Gavai said that the Supreme Court will take a call to assign a bench that will hear the matter. The CJI clarified that the matter may not be listed before him as he was part of the conversation over the Justice Varma controversy.
The writ petition filed by Justice Varma sought to quash the communication forwarded by then CJI Sanjiv Khanna to the President and then Prime Minister to take action against Justice Varma.
As per the petition, the in-house panel acted in a “pre-determined manner” and denied Justice Varma a fair opportunity to defend himself.
On Monday, 145 MPs from both the ruling and Opposition parties submitted an impeachment notice against Justice Varma to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla.
Justice Varma has been in the eye of a storm since the March 14 discovery of the burnt cash in an outhouse of his official residence allotted to him while serving in the Delhi High Court.
Following the cash-discovery row, which sent shockwaves across the judicial corridors, Justice Varma was repatriated to the Allahabad High Court, and an in-house probe was set up to probe the allegations.
According to the probe committee, both direct and electronic evidence confirmed that the storeroom was under the covert or active control of Justice Varma and his family. By way of strong inferential evidence, the in-house panel said the burnt cash was removed from the storeroom during the early hours of March 15.
In conclusion, the three-member inquiry committee, comprising Chief Justice Sheel Nagu of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, CJ G.S. Sandhawalia of the Himachal Pradesh HC and Karnataka HC’s Justice Anu Sivaraman, found the allegations serious enough to merit impeachment proceedings against Justice Varma. It opined that Justice Varma’s misconduct was not only proven but also grave enough to warrant his removal under Article 124(4) of the Constitution.
