Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR) has urged political parties to “come together” to initiate impeachment of Madhya Pradesh High Court Chief Justice, Hemant Gupta.
The allegations against Justice Gupta include money laundering, acquiring several properties by illegal means, possessing disproportionate assets, and seeking to influence officer of the ED who was investigating these charges
In a press release, the CJAR has stated that though it had written to the Chief Justice of India to set up an in-house mechanism to investigate into the allegations against Justice Gupta, there has been no communication from the CJI in this regard.
According to the press release,
“In pursuance of a resolution adopted in a Chief Justices conference 1997, it had been decided that an in-house procedure for investigating charges against sitting judges would be devised, in which the Chief Justice of India would constitute a committee of two Chief Justices of the High Court, and another High Court judge. However despite there being considerable evidence for the aforementioned charges, and the existence of a taped conversation between the J. Hemant Gupta and the ED officer in which he asked the ED officer to come and meet him to resolve the matter and thus, tried to influence him, no such in-house enquiry appears to have been set up, despite a further reminder dated 27.03.2017 sent to the Chief Justice of India. Also no communication whatsoever has been received by the CJAR from the Chief Justice of India as to what has been done to the complaint and why no in-house enquiry was set up to enquire into the charges.”
The press release also alleges that Justice Gupta has the backing of the ruling dispensation since he “comes from an influential RSS background”.
“..we find that Justice Hemant Gupta has been promoted as the regular Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court without any enquiry into the charges. It is learnt that the government of India was also seriously interested in the promotion of J. Hemant Gupta who comes from an influential RSS background.”
Since the CJI has not set up in-house committee to investigate into the charges levelled against Justice Gupta, CJAR has called for initiating impeachment of the judge.
“The CJAR feels that the case of J. Hemant Gupta is a fit case for commencement of impeachment proceedings and we urge leaders of all political parties to come together to initiate this process to protect the integrity of the judiciary.”
Meanwhile, Indian Express had reported on July 10 that the Congress Party is contemplating submitting a petition to the Rajya Sabha Chairman for initiating impeachment process of Justice Hemant Gupta.