After J. Ashok Kumar, Katju guns for ex-CJI Balakrishnan, former Karnataka Chief Justice P. Dinakaran

Weeks after alleging that an Additional Judge of the Madras High Court was made a Permanent Judge despite the presence of adverse findings, former Supreme Court judge J. Katju has now aimed his sights on the former Chief Justice of India and current head of the National Human Rights Commission, KG Balakrishnan. More specifically, the post reveals J. Balakrishnan’s attempts, and subsequent failure, to elevate Justice Dinakaran to the Supreme Court..In a blog post published today, J. Katju reveals that a Madras High Court judge who had a “very bad reputation about his integrity” was being considered for elevation to the Supreme Court. It may be pointed out that nowhere is Dinakaran’s name mentioned in the post, although there are any number of references in the post which point to J. Dinakaran being the judge in question; the reference to a transfer to Sikkim and Dinakaran’s subsequent resignation being two such examples..Alarmed at this development, J. Katju spoke to J. SH Kapadia a member of the collegium, and told him that the judge ought not to be elevated..On why he did not directly speak to then Chief Justice of India, Balakrishnan, J. Katju alleges that,.“There was no point informing Justice Balakrishnan, the then CJI, because in fact, according to my information, Justice Balakrishnan was pushing for elevation of that Judge to the Supreme Court.”.According to the blog post J. Kapadia thanked him for the information; however the collegium eventually recommended the judge for elevation to the apex court. This elevation was only stopped, according to J. Katju, after lawyers in Tamil Nadu furnished evidence of J. Dinakaran’s corruption. He also goes on to state that it was J. Balakrishnan who was “adamant” on elevating J. Dinakaran since Balakrishnan knew that the allegations of corruption were untrue..This latest revelation by the PCI chief certainly does not reflect well on the Supreme Court; and may well be all the evidence the Centre needs to push through the Judicial Appointments Commission Bill..In fact, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad will be meeting with a number of legal experts to ascertain their views on judicial appointments. According to ToI, the list of experts include former CJIs A M Ahmadi, A S Anand, V N Khare and R C Lahoti; as well as lawyers such as K Parasaran, Fali Nariman, and K K Venugopal. The country’s top legal officers, Mukul Rohatgi and Ranjit Kumar are also expected to participate in today’s meeting.