Supreme Court dismisses writ petition challenging appointment of sitting AP High Court judge Imposes Rs 50000 as costs

The Supreme Court today dismissed a writ petition challenging the appointment of Justice N.V. Ramana to the Andhra Pradesh High Court [M. Manohar Reddy & Anr v. Union of India & Ors, WP(C) 174 of 2012] and also imposed costs of Rs. 50, 000 on each of the petitioners..The writ petition had been filed by M. Manohar Reddy and Senior Advocate M.V. Narasimha Reddy on the grounds that the Collegium had failed to take notice of several vital facts while recommending Justice Ramana’s name for elevation to the High Court. A Division Bench of Justices Aftab Alam and Ranjana Desai had last heard the matter on January 21, 2013 and had reserved it for orders on maintainability..The Court in its order concluded that at the time Justice Ramana was being considered for appointment as a judge of the High Court, he was unaware of any case pending against him in which he was named as an accused. The Court also concluded that none of the members of either the High Court or the Supreme Court collegium was aware of that fact. Similarly, the Apex Court held that neither the State nor the Central government were aware of this factum. Based on the same the Court proceeded to hold that when a fact is not known to anyone, then a consultative process which resulted in an appointment cannot be faulted because it did not take into account that fact..The Court also stated that if such a fact comes to light a long time after the appointment, then the only remedy was to take recourse to the provisions of Article 124(4) or Article 217 read with Article 124(4) whereby Parliament could chose to impeach the judge in question. In case, however, the fact was unknown and there was no suppression of that fact, a writ of quo warranto would not lie on the plea that the consultative process was faulty..In its judgment, the Court refers to the fact that the representation made by the Petitioners before the Chief Justice of India was duly considered and the then Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh was asked to submit a report on the same. The Court noted that in this report, the Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh had given a clean chit to Justice Ramana. Further, in its order the Court also came down heavily on the Petitioners. According to the Court, the writ petition presented the facts of the criminal case in “a rather twisted way in an attempt to portray [Justice Ramana] in bad light.”The Court observed that the petition owed its origin to a news report published in a Telugu daily newspaper called ‘Sakshi’. The said report, according to the Court, was based on incorrect facts and was full of statements and innuendos that could have easily constituted the offence of defamation..The Court went on to observe that the “real intent of the petition” was to malign Justice Ramana and hence called for imposition of costs..The Petitioners confirmed to Bar & Bench that they will be asking the Court to reconsider this judgment since the Petitioners have apprehensions about the correctness of the judgment and that the Court has placed great reliance on extraneous material that was never put to the Petitioners..The copy of the judgment is available below: