Former chief justice of India (CJI) KG Balakrishnan flatly denied on Wednesday receiving any letter from Madras high court judge S Reghupati alleging interference in judicial functioning by former Union telecom minister A Raja.
Former chief justice of India (CJI) KG Balakrishnan flatly denied on Wednesday receiving any letter from Madras high court judge S Reghupati alleging interference in judicial functioning by former Union telecom minister A Raja.
Apparently shaken by the revelation by the Madras high court on Tuesday that Reghupati wrote such a letter, Balakrishnan, who is now chairman of National Human Rights Commission, issued a statement: “The allegations against me are baseless. I have received no such letter from justice Reghupati.”
The former CJI, however, said then chief justice of the high court, HL Gokhale, who is now a Supreme Court judge, had sent him a brief report on Reghupati’s startling revelation in an open court that a Union minister rang him up purportedly to influence a pending criminal matter. “But CJ Gokhale didn’t mention the name of the person [A Raja] in his letter,” Balakrishnan said.
“The letter written by justice Gokhale did not mention anything about influence by a Union minister. Justice Gokhale didn’t mention that the Union minister had a conversation with a judge in his letter written to me,” he said.
It may be mentioned here that soon after Reghupati made the disclosure in July last year, then CJI Balakrishnan had said that if a person had made such a call, it amounted to interference in the administration of justice. “It’s an offence liable to face the contempt of court action,” he said.
The high court had said that it was Raja who rang up Reghupati and this information had been given to then CJI.
Clearing his name, Balakrishnan said if anything that amounted to interference in judicial function had happened, justice Reghupati could have exercised his powers of contempt of court, for which no permission is required from the CJI.
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