The Verdictum Justice Deepak Verma and Justice S H Kapadia

Many readers have brought to our attention that the title ‘Judges Scorecard’ may not be the appropriate title for a column of this nature and hence we have decided to change the title to ‘Verdictum’. Verdictum is a Latin word and means ‘to tell the truth’.

Many readers have brought to our attention that the title ‘Judges Scorecard’ may not be the appropriate title for a column of this nature and hence we have decided to change the title to ‘Verdictum’. Verdictum is a Latin word and means ‘to tell the truth’.

Recently, the Apex Court bid farewell to two eminent Judges. Justice S. H. Kapadia retired as the thirty eighth Chief Justice of India on September 28, 2012. Justice Deepak Verma retired from the Apex Court on August 28, 2012. Justice Verma served the Apex Court for about 3 years and 3 months while Justice Kapadia served the Apex Court for about 8 years and 9 months.  

Justice Verma served in the Supreme Court of India for 1206 days and delivered 43 judgments. Justice Kapadia penned down 211 judgments in his 3208 days tenure as a judge in the Apex Court, which includes 871 days as CJI.

Justice S. H. Kapadia delivered a substantial number of landmark judgments during his tenure and most of them were severe blows to the ruling UPA government. A three-judge Bench headed by Justice Kapadia quashed the appointment of P. J. Thomas as the Chief Vigilance Commissioner. Justice Kapadia, in a Constitution Bench judgment, in M. Nagraj v. UOI held that the “creamy layer” among the Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes must be excluded from the benefits of reservation in matters of public employment. In the recent Vodafone judgment, it was held by a Bench headed by Justice Kapadia that the IT Department did not have jurisdiction to levy Rs. 11,000 crore as tax in an overseas deal between Vodafone and Hutchison Group. In the case on media guidelines, another Constitution Bench headed by Justice Kapadia went against the imposition of a blanket ban over the media for regulating the reporting of sub-judice matters and introduced the doctrine of “postponement”. In a landmark judgment, a three-judge Bench headed by Justice Kapadia upheld the Constitutional validity of the Right of Children to Free and Compulsory Education Act, 2009.

Justice Deepak Verma hails from the state of Madhya Pradesh. While serving as an administrative Judge of the High Court of Madhya Pradesh at Jabalpur, Justice Verma was appointed as the Welfare Commissioner, in Bhopal Gas Victims case to disburse the amount of compensation to the gas tragedy victims of Bhopal. A total of 20,124 compensation cases were disposed off by Justice Verma, which were conducted at 253 sittings. He held all of these sittings for hearing in public holidays, not adversely affecting his administrative and judicial work of the High Court.  Justice Verma was recently in news for refusing to enhance the quantum of punishment of two years awarded to Sanjeev Nanda, convicted in the 1999 BMW hit-and-run case.

You can read the first Verdictum here.

N.B.: The data has been obtained from Supreme Court’s judgment database Judis and may be subject to minor variance. The research team consisted of Nikhil V from GNLU, Gandhinagar along with Anoop K and Deepthi P from GLC, Calicut. The data verification team consisted of Arya Vivek, Meera Nazer, students of NUALS, Cochin and Sonakshi Das from KIIT Law School, Bhubaneswar.