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Judge cash row: SC issues notice on Justice Yashwant Varma’s plea challenging parliamentary panel probe

The Supreme Court issued notice to the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Secretariat on the plea by Justice Yashwant Varma, who has questioned the Lower House Speaker’s decision, saying due procedure was not followed.

3 min readNew DelhiDec 16, 2025 04:44 PM IST

Justice Yashwant Varma, who was serving at the Delhi High Court, was transferred to the Allahabad High Court following the discovery of burnt currency notes on March 14. (Source: File)

The Supreme Court Tuesday issued notice on a writ petition challenging the legal validity of the committee set up by Lok Sabha Speaker to probe the charges of corruption against Allahabad High Court judge Justice Yashwant Varma, following the discovery of unaccounted cash at his official residence during a fire incident in March this year.

A bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and A G Masih issued notice to the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha Secretariat on the plea by Justice Varma, who has questioned the Speaker’s decision on the ground that due procedure was not followed.

The identity of the petitioner has been masked in the SC cause list, which mentions him only as X.

Justice Varma contended that, though the notices for his impeachment were given in Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha, the Speaker set up the committee even before the Upper House chairman admitted it, and without holding joint consultation.

He contended that the Speaker acted in derogation of the proviso to Section 3(2) of the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, by unilaterally constituting a committee on August 12 this year after admitting a motion given before Lok Sabha on July 21, as on the very same day, a separate motion was given in Rajya Sabha which had not been admitted.

Referring to the provisions of the 1968 Act, Senior Advocate Mukul Rohatgi, appearing for the judge, said, “Where the notices of the motion are ‘given’ to the Houses on the same date, which is the case here, no Committee will be constituted…unless the motion is being admitted in both Houses. And where such motion is admitted in both Houses, the Committee shall be constituted jointly by the Lok Sabha Speaker and the Rajya Sabha Chairman.”

The senior counsel said that where it is “given” on the same day and unless the motion is formally admitted, depending on the House, “then the Committee will be jointly constituted after consultation between the Speaker and Chairman” and “will be called as Joint Committee of both Houses.”

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Justice Dutta asked, “If two motions are presented to the two Houses on the same day, where is the question of admission on the same day?”

Justice Varma, who was serving at the Delhi High Court, was transferred to the Allahabad High Court following the discovery of burnt currency notes on March 14.

On March 22, a week after discovery of the currency notes, the then Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna set up a three-member panel comprising Justice Sheel Nagu, Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court; Justice G S Sandhawalia, Chief Justice of the High Court of Himachal Pradesh; and Anu Sivaraman, Judge of the Karnataka High Court, to hold an in-house inquiry into the developments.

The panel found credence in the allegations against Justice Varma. The report was forwarded to the President and Prime Minister after Justice Varma refused to step down following the committee’s findings.