Sakina Tashrifwala
Published on: 13 November 2022 at 20:18 IST
The Supreme Court has served notices of contempt of court to an advocate-petitioner and his Advocate-on-Record, who filed a plea in the apex court that lawyers filing petitions on behalf of litigants would be liable for contempt of court proceedings if the plaint contained disparaging remarks regarding judges.
The bench of Justices B R Gavai and B V Nagarathna directed individuals to be present in next court hearing on 2, December.
“Send a notice to Mohan Chandra P, the petitioner, and Vipin Kumar Jai, the Advocate-on-Record, asking them to respond by December 2 with a justification for why a contempt of court action should not be brought against them.”
According to a notification from the Karnataka Information Commission dated August 7, 2018, counsel Mohan Chandra had submitted applications for the positions of chief information commissioner and state information commissioner. The three candidates recommended by the selection committee for the CIC and IC positions did not include the name of Chandra. He appealed the selection procedure, the appointment of the CIC, and his non-appointment to the advertised positions before the Karnataka High Court.
On April 21 of this year, a single judge bench of the HC dismissed his petition. Chandra appealed this decision before a division of the High Court, which was dismissed with a cost of Rs. 5 lakhs.
Thereby, the Special Leave Petition was filed before the SC, stating in his plea that, “The reason assigned by the division bench of the Karnataka HC for extraneous reason and to harass the respondents is unwarranted one and without any basis or foundation to justify the same. On the other hand, the division bench has taken into consideration extraneous reasons and as a revenge imposed an exemplary cost of Rs 5 lakh to the petitioner.”
The petitioner simply, implied that the judges had rejected the plea in order to acquire cheap publicity.