As the outgoing Chief Justice of the Jammu & Kashmir High Court, Barin Ghosh left for his transfer to Sikkim,  the J&K Bar Association led by President Mian Abdul Qayoom, has praised the judge and his rulings during his 14-month tenure.

The Bar Association has openly acknowledged and backed Justice Ghosh and regrets his transfer. Qayoom believes that Justice Ghosh was wronged and has fallen victim to ‘punishment posting’ to a state which has 3 judges.

‘Punishment postings’, a term common in the bureaucracy, aims to stifle and reduce the impact of the ‘penalized’. In the case of Justice Ghosh, he will now be sent to a relatively smaller state where his full potential will probably never be realized.

The 62-day strike by the people of Shopian also ended when the Chief Justice made an appeal and promised justice. He followed the promise up with an order to all lower courts that none of the accused be granted bail without consulting the High Court. Other notable orders include the one seeking the army to vacate 4,000 kanals of land and another where he made it a point to preside on a petition filed in Jammu seeking delimitation of Assembly seats.

Politics is not non-existent in the judicial arena. Former Chief Justice, A.P. Shah, for example, is widely respected and acknowledged as an erudite, knowledgeable and a firm-but-kind judge is one of the more recent victims of this politics. It came as a shocker when he was overlooked for a promotion to the Supreme Court. He had, in an interview with Indian Express’ editor Shekhar Gupta expressed a need to change from the collegium system to a broad based committee.

He said, “I am just talking about my concern about the collegium system and I don’t mean any disrespect towards anybody. The basic flaw in the system is lack of transparency. There are no procedures. There are no parameters fixed for the elevations, either in the High Court or the Supreme Court. The system is very opaque. If I use the words of Justice Krishna Iyer—very strong words—but he said that this selection process is carried in a secret and bizarre fashion. Not very open. So there is a need to change the system. And we can look beyond our jurisdictions.”

Justice Ghosh is expected to take oath in Sikkim today. Justice Ghosh, however, has chosen to remain silent on the issue.