Newsmaker: Justice Dharam Veer Sharma

A voice of dissent or divine intervention?

Justice Dharam Veer Sharma is a man who has risen from the ranks. More importantly, he has presided over the judicial bureaucracy. So, he knows both the law and governance. It was with this knowledge that he decided earlier this week to issue an order dissenting with his two brother judges on the Lucknow bench of the Allahabad High Court hearing the Ayodhya title suit. The Supreme Court agreed that out-of-court discussions must be given another chance and agreed to defer the verdict by a few days.

Sharma completed his first degree in law in 1970 and joined the judicial branch of the Provincial Civil Service in 1972. From Barabanki, a small town in UP, his early career was unremarkable. He joined the Higher Judicial Service in 1985, clearly on the fast track, but was determined in his view that the law stood above all things.

In 1989, he was appointed chief law officer at UP Financial Corporation, Kanpur, a post he occupied until 1991. He then joined the UP government as joint secretary and joint legal remembrancer. Between 1994 and 2002, Sharma was promoted rapidly, ending as judicial secretary with the state government in 2002.

He could not go higher in this branch of government, so he was promoted in 2002 as a district & sessions judge. This stint was to last only a short while. The Mayawati-led UP government sought his services as principal secretary, parliamentary affairs, from 2003 to 2004. He was then appointed principal secretary (judicial) from 2004 to 2005.

In 2005, Sharma was made additional judge in the Allahabad High Court and elevated to permanent judge in 2007. Last year, he was in the news for commuting the death sentence given to the murderers of Manjunath, the IIM-L educated IOC employee, into a life sentence. That matter is now with the Supreme Court, too.

Sharma is wedded to the law: he is a bachelor and lives alone. He cooks his own food — some suggest because of religious reasons (he is a devout Hindu).

He is the junior-most on the bench. The other two judges, Justices SU Khan and Sudhir Aggarwal, are on the Allahabad bench, whereas he is on the Lucknow bench. There has been very little interaction between the three judges.

Lawyers say Sharma is known as a judge who understands governance. This could explain the circumstance of his dissent note. It came three days after the original verdict that ruled there could be no further postponements. Dissent notes are usually included in the main judgment with judges agreeing to disagree and the majority verdict prevailing.

“I am sorry to state that at the time of the passing of the order, I was not consulted. Otherwise, I would have given my views to honourable brother judges,” he said in his nine-page order, issued from his chamber and circulated among lawyers. If a judge pulls out of a bench before the verdict, the entire case has to be heard again. He retires on October 1. Quite what Sharma wanted to achieve is not clear. But, there is some divine intervention here.