Newly appointed acting Chief Justice of Kerala High Court, Justice Hrishikesh Roy has come up strongly against the previous CJ Antony Dominique’s instruction which allows the advocates to select the benches os their choice for the hearing. He made it clear that the norm to select desirable judges by the advocates was unacceptable.
Judges should not be chosen by the advocates and such a condition was immoral, said Roy. The former Chief Justice had approved the plea by 4 advocates to change a case which had been given to the bench of Justice V.Chidambaresh to a bench of their choice. Acting CJ Hrishikesh Roy came against this.
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He considered this decision as the one which promoted ‘bench hunting’ and ‘forum shopping’, which are the conditions under which the advocates select their judges.
All the issue started with the missing of files regarding a land dispute case in Palakkad, which had been entrusted to the bench of Justice Chidambaresh.After an investigation by the Vigilance Registrar in the HC, a report was submitted. In the report, it was said that with the help of the concerned official, advocate or his clerk might have changed the file.
Under this circumstance, while hearing the case Justice Chidambaresh made some statements against the advocates following which they approached then Chief Justice Antony Dominique to change the bench.
The demand by the advocates were approved by the Administrative Committee headed by Antony Dominique in the meeting held on 28th last month. This decision has been nullified by the newly appointed Acting Chief Justice Hrishikesh Roy and the Administrative Committee under him.
Earlier, the veteran judge Kemal Pasha had come against the retired CJ regarding this case, whose revelation that time became a major controversy. He revealed about the instance when the government involved cases had been removed from his bench.
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