Judges skip tea party for CJ, part on a bitter note

Senior lawyers said it was for the first time in the history of the high court that so many judges chose to keep away from such a function.

Relations between Chief Justice Roy and other High Court judges have been strained since April last year when the Chief Justice took on two of his colleagues

over their membership of a controversial club. That led to the unprecedented step of 25 of the 28 judges of the high court immediately going on protest leave.

In fact, Justice Amar Dutt, who had abstained from this strike, was the only judge to attend Monday’s tea party by the Bar.

On his last day in office, Justice Roy cancelled allotment of land by the Chandigarh administration to a law institute that has as its directors two sons of sitting HC judge, Justice J S Narang, calling it ‘‘illegal’’ and done to favour influential people on the institute’s board.

Members of the Bar Association, which invited all judges for the farewell tea on Monday, were taken aback when the judges stayed away. A R Sidhu, president of the Bar Association, said it was a convention to invite outgoing and incoming Chief Justices to tea party along with all other judges.

‘‘Invites were sent to the judges this time as well, but it was their prerogative to attend or not,’’ added Sidhu.

Sidhu added that the Bar had done its best to sort out differences among judges. ‘‘But it could not do much since the problem was exclusive to the Bench,’’ he said, adding that the Bar was not responsible for the current state of affairs at the High Court.

Union Law Minister H.R. Bhardwaj had recently gone on record to say that the Bar had failed in its duties to ensure proper functioning of the court.