Supreme Court Employees “pained” by allegation of corruption in Registry, back CJI Gogoi

In the wake of doubts being cast on the integrity of the Supreme Court Registry, employees of the Court gathered yesterday to discuss and address the issue.

The meeting was led by President of the Supreme Court Employees Association BN Rao, who began by saying that this is the first time in all these years that the Supreme Court Registry has been in the news on account of allegations of corruption. This development has deeply pained the employees who work at the Supreme Court, he said.

Rao further condemned these instances of bringing disrepute to the Registry and the institution, and said,

“External forces have led people to believe that there is corruption in the Registry. This is very unfortunate.”

Asserting that it would be unfair to paint all the employees in the same colour, Rao added that the Registry works in a transparent fashion and that the employees work with integrity. The discussions in the media pertaining to allegations of corruption in the Registry have disturbed the employees, he added.

However, when asked about the recent incident of two former Court employees being suspended and later arrested for allegedly tampering with the Court’s order in the contempt case against Anil Ambani, the members of this gathering declined to comment.

“That matter is sub-judice right now”, said one of the employees.

The gathering thereafter went on to extend its support to the Supreme Court and the judges. Rao declared,

“We will always function in a transparent manner…We are all one and we will work with unity. We will always stand with our institution and our Chief Justice. The judges are like our fathers and we are with them.”

This declaration was followed by a woman employee addressing the allegations of sexual harassment made against Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi that have been haunting the Supreme Court. She said that “baseless allegations” were being levelled against a fine judge like CJI Gogoi, a sentiment that garnered support from everybody that was part of the gathering.

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