Tuesday, August 2, 2011

Chief Justice Dinakaran puts in his papers

GANGTOK, 29 July: In a development which has been on the anvil for a while now, Chief Justice of Sikkim High Court, Justice PD Dinakaran, submitted his resignation papers to the office of the President of India in New Delhi this evening.
Official sources at the High Court and a close family member of the Chief Justice, confirmed that he submitted his resignation at around 4 p.m. to the office of the President.

However, the CJ has still not received any intimation from the President’s office on the acceptance of the resignation letter, sources close to him inform.
Justice Dinakaran had taken over as Chief Justice of Sikkim on 09 August 2010.
The Chief Justice, it may be informed, had left for New Delhi yesterday and is still in the capital waiting for the correspondence from the President’s office. It may be recalled that the President of India is not in the country at present, which has delayed any confirmation related to his resignation letter dated 28 July, 2011.
A Rajya Sabha-appointed panel was probing the charges of graft and misconduct against the Chief Justice on allegations dating back to his term in office as Chief Justice in Karnataka.
Earlier this week, the Supreme Court had ruled that the judicial panel was free to frame any rule for conduct of the proceedings. A bench of justices GS Singhvi and CK Prasad in an order rejected Justcie Dinakaran’s plea that permitting the convenor of the Forum for Judicial Accountability, R Vaigai, to watch the proceedings violated his statutory or Constitutional right.
By an order dated May 24, 2011 the three-member committee headed by Supreme Court judge Justice Aftab Alam under the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 permitted Vaigai to observe the proceedings through a counsel.
The Forum for Judicial Accountability had been in the forefront seeking removal of Justice Dinakaran for his alleged corrupt practices.
On July 5, the apex court had rejected Justice Dinakaran’s plea for invalidating the inquiry but conceded his plea for replacing senior lawyer PP Rao from the panel after the judge alleged he was biased against him.
The Rajya Sabha chairman subsequently replaced Rao with G Mohan Gopal, Director of Rajiv Gandhi Institute for Contemporary Studies at the Rajiv Gandhi Foundation.
The committee will continue to have Supreme Court judge Aftab Alam as chairman and Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court J S Khehar as one of the members.


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