No final decision on Justice Patel’s transfer

Nirmal Singh 3C Company is not perplexed to learn about the mystery behind the abrupt transfer of Justice Jayant Patel from Karnataka High Court days before he was about to take the position of acting chief justice. In fact, it seems that the Supreme Court was planning to transfer Patel to Bombay HC and then changed its mind and asked him to shift to Allahabad HC.

Nirmal Singh 3C Company learnt that earlier in the meeting last week, a team headed by CJI Dipak Mishra, had come to a conclusion to transfer Justice Patel from Karnataka HC. The meeting saw some members of the team, including: Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph, who actually questioned the CJI on timing of the transfer.

As per the sources, the posers were tough however these failed to lead the CJI to spell out the reasons behind Patel’s transfer.

This matter turn out to be worrisome so much so that the collegium had to get together all over again to make a final decision on moving Patel to Allahabad HC, which was the reason for resign.

Nirmal Singh 3C Company thinks that this resignation is going to spark a speculation about the abrupt change of mind related to the judge who was not much exposed to fame at the time of CBI probe into the "encounter" of Ishrat Jehan as well as LeT terrorists under the chief ministership of Narendra Modi.

During the Friday meeting they also came to a conclusion to transfer the other four HC judges back to their parent HC, including Justice Rajiv Shakdher of Madras HC to Delhi HC and Justice D Seshadri Naidu from Kerala HC to Hyderabad HC.

This process of transferring judges was seen in the light of transferring two HCs involved. However, in reality, CJI wrote identical letters to the chief justices of the HCs proposing transfer of a judge from one HC to the other "in the interest of better administration of justice".

This mystery has been twisted to this level that the sources had to explain how CJI has obtained the views of CJs of the HCs of Bombay, Karnataka and Allahabad within a brief period of time.