‘Shocking… regrettable’: SC on a judge’s conduct

The only thing that the Supreme Court did with Lala, who is due to function as a judge for at least another nine years, is that it forbade him to deal with that particular mortgage case which has been reverted to the Calcutta High Court.

While setting aside the order of sale passed by Lala in 1998, a Supreme Court bench comprising Justice S.N. Variava and Justice Brijesh Kumar requested the Chief Justice of the Calcutta High Court ‘‘to ensure that the judge who passed the order of sale does not deal with this matter at any stage.’’

The provocation was the sale ordered by Lala in the mortgage case of a Kolkata factory ‘‘at a throwaway price’’ to a businessman called Jatan Surana disregarding the legal procedure of holding an auction. The property was of a company called Dwarka Industrial Development Pvt Ltd which owed Rs 1.32 crore to Indian Bank and Rs 1.10 crore to Industrial Reconstruction Bank of India (IRBI).

Yet, Lala ordered the sale merely at the instance of IRBI which struck ‘‘an understanding’’ with Surana and a group of factory workers. Displaying undue haste, Lala passed the order of sale without giving a proper notice to Indian Bank, which had the biggest financial stake in the matter.

Worse, he did so as a vacation judge on a matter that was already pending before another judge of the high court. In a striking parallel to Justice Mukherjee’s alleged nexus with members of the bar, the Supreme Court found that Lala acted in tandem with a lawyer, Roop Chand Chakraborty, who had been appointed as a receiver of the property.

‘‘The conduct of the receiver and the court, i.e. the vacation judge, in this episode, leaves much to be desired,’’ the apex court said.

Lala’s order was in the first instance reversed in 1999 on Indian Bank’s petition. It was done by a division bench of the Calcutta high court headed by Justice Ruma Pal, who has since been elevated to the Supreme Court.

Interestingly, Ruma Pal pointed out a tell-tale slip-up of the receiver in the conveyance he executed hastily in favour of Surana. The receiver conveyed ‘‘the assets and properties both movable and immovable including the Hon’ble Justice Amitava Lala in favour of the said Jatan Surana.’’

Upholding Ruma Pal’s judgment, the Supreme Court launched a scathing attack on Lala’s conduct as a vacation judge during the puja holidays in October 1998. The bench headed by Justice Variava said: ‘‘One fails to understand how another application could have been filed in the vacation. It is all the more shocking that it is promptly taken up by the vacation court, along with applications which were not on board and an order of sale passed without giving any opportunity to any party to file a reply and without even making any attempt to ascertain whether a higher price could be obtained.’’

As a corollary, the Supreme Court directed the high court to inquire into the role of the receiver. It also directed IRBI to take departmental action against the officer who struck the deal with Surana. But, oddly enough, the Supreme Court did not deem it necessary to call for a similar probe into the conduct of the high court judge concerned.

This despite the Supreme Court’s claim to have in place an in-house procedure of inquiry to deal with ‘‘deviant behaviour’’ among judges.

There have so far been only three instances on which the Chief Justice of India put the in-house procedure in motion — and all of them have been only as a consequence of external factors such as the press, bar and human rights activists.

The April 24 judgment shows that, even when there was a wide-spread outrage over the Mukherjee controversy, the Supreme Court remains unwilling to enforce judicial accountability on its own.