SC stays Justice Karnan’s order after Madras HC approaches apex court

If there is one court in India with more drama and action than the Supreme Court, it would be the Madras High Court. In what could very well go down in history as one of the most bizarre of incidents involving higher judiciary, the High Court has approached the Supreme Court against one of its own sitting judges – Justice CS Karnan. Justice Karnan has been accused of judicial indiscipline and challenging the authority of the Chief Justice..The Supreme Court today issued notice to Justice Karnan and also restrained him from hearing or issuing any directions in the writ petition before the High Court. Senior Advocate KK Venugopal appeared for Madras High Court. The Court also stayed the April 30 order of Justice Karnan, and clarified that there shall not be any interference from any person, authority or judge in completing the process of recruitment of civil judges. The case shall now be heard after the summer vacation..The matter pertains to the selection of civil judges for the State. According to this report by Times of India, Chief Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul had constituted a recruitment committee comprising five judges to interview candidates for the same. The judges who were selected to be part of the committee were – Justices V Dhanapalan, R Sudhakar, D Hariparanthaman, N Kirubakaran and R Mala..However, this had not gone down well with Justice Karnan, who initiated suo moto proceedings against the administrative decision of the Chief Justice and stayed the same. In his order, Justice Karnan stated the following:.“In order to control the mal-administration of My Lord Chief Justice, I am passing this suo-motu judicial order in the interest of justice invoking Article 226 of the Constitution to restore the confidence in the Madras high court and confidence with the general public”..He then directed that the recruitment committee must have two judges from minority communities – one from the Muslim community and another from the Christian community – to give a fair representation to all communities in the recruitment committee..On April 17, Justice Karnana’s suo motu order was placed before a Division Bench of Justices S Tamilvanan and C T Selvam, which stayed the April 16 order. When Justice Karnan came to know of this, he swung into action and directed the Registry to place the matter before him on judicial side on April 30. When the matter came up for hearing on April 30, he reiterated his earlier order and threatened the Chief Justice with contempt of court proceedings..The April 30 order reads as follows:. “This court requests My Lord the Chief Justice to extend his cooperation without any interference with my court’s proceedings and its judicial power in order to maintain decorum of the court and avoid an unhealthy practice of judiciary in the interest of the general public. My deep request to the Chief Justice is to avoid ego and stop acting in an autocratic manner to protect democracy.”.Justice Karnan also threatened the Chief Justice with contempt of court action and proceedings under SC/ ST Act for harassing him, if he interferes in the judicial process. .This is not the first time Justice Karnan is opposing the High Court on the administrative side. In 2014, he had rushed into a court room during the hearing of a PIL challenging the recommendations of the Collegium and had protested against the recommendations.