Justices BS Chauhan, CK Prasad and Deepak Verma in IPL 2012 proposed invitees list

The Supreme Court of India is always in thick of action. This time around there might be nothing in it or there might be a lot in it; and it is a screenshot of an e-mail sent by the then Chairman of Indian Premier League (IPL), Rajeev Shukla which has caught Supreme Court off guard..The e-mail has names of three Supreme Court judges (all retired now) figuring in the list of proposed invitees for the opening ceremony of IPL 2012. The three judges are Justices BS Chauhan, CK Prasad and Deepak Verma..The names find place in the e-mail sent by Rajiv Shukla to Sundar Raman, the Chief Operating Officer of IPL. Raman has forwarded the e-mail to former BCCI President N Srinivasan with a request to “advise”. A screenshot of the mail was tweeted by former IPL Commissioner Lalit Modi yesterday..The list also contains names of politicians, industrialists and even former Interpol Secretary General Ronald K Noble. Senior Advocates Kapil Sibal and P Chidambaram, who were then serving as Union ministers, also figure in the list..It is not clear whether the three judges were actually invited and whether they attended the function or not. Modi has also uploaded the screenshot of the e-mail on his Instagram account with a description “Here is the first of 100’s of#hospitality services provided to so many” accompanying it..Justice BS Chauhan is currently the Chairman of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal while Justice Prasad is the Chairperson of the Press Council of India..Justice CK Prasad and Justice BS Chauhan have been embroiled in controversies even before. Justice Prasad had been alleged to have got a case listed before him suo moto and passed orders favourable to a particular party. His candidature for PCI Chairmanship had, subsequently, been opposed by advocate Prashant Bhushan albeit unsuccessfully..Allegations of benami transactions and harassment of lady judge had surfaced against Justice Chauhan in a legal magazine India Legal last year though mainstream media had not taken it up..Image courtesy: Website of Supreme Court of India