“One may not approve of all that he does, but let the system work”, CJI Thakur on Madras HC’s Karnan J.

The Supreme Court today refused to entertain a petition seeking investigation into the alleged “corrupt practices” of sitting Madras High Court judge, Justice CS Karnan..The petition was filed by Madurai based lawyer Lajapathi Roy..A Bench of Chief Justice of India TS Thakur, along with AK Sikri and R Banumathi JJ. refused to entertain the case, whereupon it was withdrawn..Senior Advocate R Venkataramani appeared for Roy, along with Advocate Satya Mitra Garg..Roy, in his petiton has made some scathing allegations against Justice Karnan. As per the petition,.“..The petitioner as well as other advocates practising in the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court and numerous litigants are aggrieved by the corrupt practices of Hon’ble Mr. Justice CS Karnan in favouring the litigants for monetary consideration. There are plenty of circumstantial evidence against his corrupt practices which are distinctively stated in various representations made to the Hon’ble Chief Justice of India as well as the Hon’ble Chief Justice of Madras High Court.”.The petition sets out specific instances wherein various parties had made representations to the Madras High Court Chief Justice as well as the Chief Justice of India, alleging favouritism and bias on the part of Karnan J. while deciding their cases..The petition states that besides the representations made by various litigants and lawyers against the sitting judge, the Bench had also complained to the Chief Justice about Karnan J..“…in the year 2014 again 19 Hon’ble judges of Madras High Court had preferred a complaint to the Hon’ble Chief Justice of Madras High Court….…by indulging in corrupt practices, Hon’ble Mr. Justice CS Karnan is every day violating the oath of his office taken by him under Article 210 which is also resulting in denial of access to Justice to the poor litigants and in violation of their fundamental right a under A.14 and 21….”.The petitioner has submitted that in spite of these representations, “no action was taken to check the corrupt practices of Justice Karnan”. And this prompted the writ petition..The petitioner had prayed for constituting “an inquiry committee as per the in-house Procedure devised by this Hon’ble Court to inquire into the allegations of corrupt practice by Hon’ble Mr. Justice CS Karnan as judge of Madras High Court and take appropriate legal action”..When the matter came up for hearing as item 11 in court 1, Chief Justice Thakur did not seem inclined to entertain the case. He remarked,.“One may not approve of all that he does, but let the system work.”.The petitioner then chose to withdraw the petition..Image taken from here.