JOIN USHigh Court trashes Upalokayukta's plea against ouster motion
The High Court on Wednesday dismissed Upalokayukta Justice Subhash B Adi’s petition that challenged the legality of the motion adopted by the Legislative Assembly for his ouster.
Justice Raghvendra S Chauhan dismissed the petition on the grounds that it was not maintainable as the government had submitted to the court that the motion to remove the Upalokayukta had been “admitted” and the Speaker had referred the matter to the Chief Justice of Karnataka for further enquiry.
Advocate General Madhusudan R Naik apologised to the bench and the Upalokayukta’s counsel B V Acharya, stating that the transcript of the proceedings of the House submitted to the court earlier was “unauthenticated”.
He said that on November 27, 2015, when Tanveer Sait and 79 other Congress MLAs initiated a motion for Justice Adi’s ouster, there was a lot of commotion in the House. Five days later, on December 2, 2015, the website of the Karnataka Legislature uploaded the motion as “admitted”. But the “corrected” version of the proceedings of the motion was uploaded only on December 21, 2015.
It was only the second upload that the Speaker had “accepted”, the advocate general said. Appearing for Justice Adi, senior counsel Acharya questioned the government’s move to submit a “ tampered” version of the transcript to the court.
He argued that unless the person was found guilty, the proceedings could not be initiated against them. Ruling on the petition, the bench cited a Supreme Court judgment in Sarojini Ramaswamy vs Union of India, 1992, which stated that once a motion to oust a judge has been initiated by members of the House, the judiciary cannot interfere with it.
Justice Chauhan ruled that as the Speaker had referred the matter to the Chief Justice, the judiciary did not have the power to interfere as it was bound by the Supreme Court order. The petition is not maintainable on merit and is hence dismissed, he ruled.