Withdraw charges, get back Admiral rank, Bhagwat told

The bench which opined that thedismissal was “one of the most unfortunate thing to have happened in the history of Independent India”, has now kept the matter for orders tomorrow, having heard the two sides exclusively on the preliminary objection of the Union of India that the petition was “hopelessly barred by time”, and not on the merits of the case.

While noting that the Union Government has not filed any affidavit on the merits of the petition, but only on the `delay and latches’, Justice Shah remarked that the Union Government will have to file one, if the bench feels that it is necessary to go further into the matter.

The day-long arguments commenced with Bhagwat, wife and advocate for the petitioner arguing that the delay of six months and 23 days (since the petition was filed on June 30, 1999 and Bhagwat was dismissed on December 30, 1998) was because she was collecting relevant documents. “Can a naval chief be expected to come to court without proper documentation?” she asked. She argued that even under theAdministrative Tribunal Act, a government official was given a year’s limit to approach the tribunal. “In this case, it is a former chief of naval staff,” she submitted.

However, Chandrachud argued that the delay was a well intentioned one where the petitioner who appeared on Aap Ki Adalat and “all the Star TV programmes” wanted to exhaust the political forum, the electronic media and waited for the election results. “The documents attached to the petition in any case could not have been those that he could have access to once he is removed. So he either had the papers with him when he left or he unauthorisedly accessed them after his removal,” he argued. Bhagwat, who shot up time and again to rebut Chandrachud argued that the papers annexed were mostly from the petition filed by Deputy Chief of Naval Staff Vice Admiral Harinder Singh in the Calcutta High Court.

Chandrachud expressed surprise that an officer who was retiring in September 1999 would not want his petition heard expeditiously.Bhagwat again argued that she did not want any out of turn hearing. She wanted to wait till the bench changed since she did not want the petition to come up before Justice B N Srikrishna, after an altercation between them during the Srikrishna Commission on the riots of 1993. “Should I be punished for standing in a queue?” she argued.

Chandrachud submitted that Vishnu Bhagwat was removed because of the “brazen acts of defiance of a civilian government”. Among the three acts were the appointment of Madanjit Singh, as the deputy chief of naval staff by the petitioner without consulting the ministry of defence; the refusal to consider the submissions of vice admiral Sushil Kumar for an operational posting and the instance of a protest lodged by the Director of Naval Intelligence with the Pakistan High Commission regarding overflying of Pak plans over Naval ships, which was a breach of protocol since it could be done so only through the Ministry of External Affairs.

These acts coupled with the formerchief’s alleged letting out of classified information on the `Sagarika’ project and the ATV nuclear submarine project, led to his removal. Chandrachud even offered “highly sensitive records” to the bench for consideration, but Bhagwat opposed it saying that the petitioner was not aware of what “fabricated documents” were being presented to the court. Chandrachud expressed surprise that the petitioner would object to this.

However, Justice Shah refused to go through the records and remarked that the bench would not want to do so since it was not hearing the petition on its merits as yet.