Delhi High Court Fines Lawyer $10 Thousand for ‘Outrageous Slanders’ Against Judge Alleged ‘Fraud in Civil Service’

A dividing bench Justice C Hari Shankar And Judge Girish Kathpalia He said in order: “No plaintiff, especially a lawyer who appears personally as a plaintiff, can be allowed to try to intimidate the court. Of course, the court should not be overly sensitive. However, when the plaintiff stubbornly continues his efforts to ignore such behavior despite the court repeatedly ignoring such conduct of the plaintiff and repeatedly advising him to limit his arguments to the merits of the case, the least the court should do is to put this behavior on record. We feel obliged to record such unacceptable conduct by the Review Petitioner, an Advocate who was personally present.”

The court noted that before the current review petition, the petitioner filed another review petition that “contained extremely outrageous slander about the Hon’ble Judge of the panel who wrote the decision under review.” In the earlier review plea, the petitioner had alleged that the order seeking review of the decision was written on the Judge’s “last day” before his appointment as Chief Judge of another Court, not only that the decision was wrong but also led to severe penalties. Failure of justice due to “pure error of the court”.

“We raised strong objection to the tone and content of the petition, therefore, the review petitioner sought permission to withdraw the same with freedom to re-file in moderate language, expressing regrets, in accordance with the order dated 18.10.2024.” said the court.

The case arose out of the order of the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) rejecting the petitioner’s application for recruitment to the post of administrative officer in the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO). When he was not selected for the post, he challenged the recruitment before the CAT, claiming that the interview was not conducted fairly, and despite scoring the highest score in the written exam, he was not selected. However, the CAT rejected the application on the grounds that the criteria set for selection were not followed correctly by the authorities.

The petitioner petitioned the Supreme Court against the CAT’s decision. It was rejected by the coordinating panel of the Supreme Court. The applicant later filed a petition for reconsideration against the decision to reject his petition. The court noted that while the petitioner was arguing the review petition before it, during the arguments the petitioner had alleged that the order under review was a cut-copy-paste of the CAT’s decision. The court said there was a concerted effort to cover up a “fraud in public services” by the petitioner acting on “recommendations”.

The court stated: “Even though we dictated the decision paper and hence reserved the decision, the petitioner insisted that we could not reserve the decision and had to declare the applicable part before him. We also informed him that we were sitting in a Special Board and that the relevant Single Board issues also needed to be addressed, but he continued to insist that we immediately pass the factual portion of the resolution and deny the Petition for Reconsideration. We issue a brief order clarifying that we are not under any legal obligation while reserving orders on the present petition for review..”

The apex court also observed: The legal position regarding the scope of review proceedings is well established. The court said that on an earlier occasion it had recorded some prima facie inconclusive observations regarding the same set of facts and these observations could not in themselves be conclusive.

“Similarly, even if some wording in the order under consideration is incorrect, it does not follow that this is an “apparent error on the record,” for there is a real, if not always sufficient, difference between a purely erroneous decision and a decision overturned by “manifest error.” review of the disclosure is in no way a disguised appeal in which an erroneous decision is reheard and corrected solely for patent error…In the exercise of jurisdiction under Order 47 Rule 1 CPC, “rehearing and correction” of an erroneous decision is not permitted. It should be noted that a review petition has a limited purpose and cannot be allowed to be an appeal in disguise.,” he said.

In the present case, the Court said the plaintiff used “cherry-picked phrases” from the decision, ignoring the general discussion and analysis of rival claims. The court noted that the decision did not show any obvious error in the record. He said that when the entire decision is read, it clearly shows that there is no error, what about the error visible in the records?

He later said: “The petitioner did not even whisper any irregularities until he was rejected due to his lowest score”.

Stating that there was no error in the records, the high court rejected the review petition, finding it baseless and meaningless. It also imposed a cost of Rs. 10,000 to the petitioner.

Case title: Ravi Kumar v. Ministry of Space and Ors.

(REVIEW PET. 402/2024 IN WP(C) 2659/2019)