A single complaint not enough: Andhra Pradesh High Court issues crucial warning on assessing a judge’s integrity

Strong caution on integrity remarks

• It would be necessary to place a caution regarding the manner in which adverse remarks, especially relating to the integrity of judges, are to be made in the ‘Confidential Reports’ of judicial officers.
• It is an acknowledged fact that disgruntled employees, colleagues or litigants are prone to make allegations against judicial officers, especially on their integrity.
• The honourable judges of this court have always balanced the need to investigate such complaints with the need to protect honest officers who are being targeted for having passed orders or judgments which are not to the liking of the learned counsel appearing for parties or for the litigants themselves.

‘Multiple sources needed’

• One such protection could be to seek inputs from diverse sources and not to record an adverse entry, especially regarding the integrity of a judicial officer, based on a single input, even if the said input is from the principal district judge of the said district.
• It is the view of this court that unless such allegations are cross-checked, it would not be safe to pass any adverse remark against the judicial officer.

Court declines to interfere

• The bench noted that the judgments cited by the petitioner did not establish that discreet enquiries could never be relied upon while preparing confidential reports of judicial officers.
• It held that administrative committees responsible for assessing judicial officers exercise institutional discretion, and courts ordinarily do not substitute their own assessment for that of such committees.
• “In such circumstances, this court cannot substitute its view for the view of the review committee as to whether the integrity of the petitioner was doubtful or otherwise,” the bench observed.

Final outcome

• Finding no grounds to interfere with the administrative decision of the review committee, the Andhra Pradesh High Court dismissed the writ petition and declined to expunge the adverse entry from the petitioner’s 2009 confidential report.
• The court also directed that there would be no order as to costs, and all pending miscellaneous petitions in the matter would stand closed.

Petition by judicial officer

• The case was filed by N Vijaya Babu, a judicial officer appointed as a junior civil judge in 2008, who had served in various courts across the erstwhile and the present state of Andhra Pradesh.
• In November 2011, he received his ACR for the year 2009, which assessed his performance during his posting as junior civil judge at Huzurnagar in Nalgonda district.
• The report described his work as “average” and recorded that his integrity was doubtful and that he was erratic in his judicial approach.
• Contending that the remarks were unjustified, the officer sought the material relied upon while preparing the confidential report.

Material relied upon in report

• In response to his representation dated November 21, 2011, the Registrar (Vigilance) of the Andhra Pradesh High Court, through a communication dated January 23, 2012, furnished the material placed before the judges’ committee while preparing the ACR.
• The documents included work review statements for 2009, confidential reports submitted by the principal district judge, Nalgonda, and references to two disciplinary enquiries that were pending against the officer at the time the confidential report was prepared.
• However, both disciplinary proceedings were later dropped by the Andhra Pradesh High Court on June 20, 2012 and August 3, 2012.

Request to review adverse remarks

• Following his exoneration in the disciplinary proceedings, Vijaya Babu submitted another representation on September 21, 2012, requesting that the adverse remarks in the 2009 ACR be reviewed and removed.
• The Andhra Pradesh High Court administration, however, rejected the request through proceedings dated February 19, 2013.
• Seeking clarity, the officer again wrote to the authorities asking for reasons behind the rejection.
• In response, the registrar (vigilance) communicated on August 19, 2013, that the adverse entry had been recorded by one of the high court judges while writing the confidential report.
• The judge had relied on pending disciplinary cases at the time and discreet enquiries conducted with the then district judge.
• The communication further stated that direct evidence or definite material may not always be available when forming opinions about a judicial officer’s integrity in confidential reports.

Arguments before court

• Advocate V R Reddy Kovvuri, counsel for the petitioner, argued that once the disciplinary proceedings had been dropped and the officer had been exonerated, the integrity-related remarks could not continue to remain in the ACR.
• The counsel also contended that discreet enquiries cannot be the basis for adverse entries affecting a judicial officer’s career.
• To support this argument, reliance was placed on several judicial precedents including, Registrar General, High Court of Patna v. Pandey Gajendra Prasad (2012), High Court of Judicature at Allahabad v. Sarnam Singh, High Court of Punjab & Haryana v. Ishwar Chand and Barkha Gupta v. High Court of Delhi.