High season for recusals

Recusal, or withdrawal of judges from the bench hearing a given case on the ground of conflict of interests, is common but hardly noticed except in high-profile suits. In that sense, it was a bad season for the Supreme Court.

A few weeks ago, Justice S H Kapadia, the next in line for the chief justiceship, had to clarify his continuation in the bench hearing forest cases. He had disclosed that he had shares in Vedanta, which was before the court in connection with the aluminium plant being set up in Orissa. He had told counsel on both sides that he would withdraw from the bench if they had any reservations. No one objected and he continued on the bench which passed the judgment. However, a magazine raked up the issue and he clarified recently that he heard the case because the parties had not objected.

In one case involving Reliance Industries and BPCL, Justice Markandey Katju is reported to have recused himself because his wife held shares in the company. The court had reserved judgment in the case some time ago.

 In the K-G gas cases, the first instance of recusal was reported from the Bombay high court which was hearing the petitions last year. Justice Roshan Dalvi withdrew herself in August last year from the case involving Reliance Industries Ltd (RIL) and state-owned National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC) over the supply of gas from the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin. The reason reported was that she owned four shares in the government company.

In the ongoing Reliance cases, Justice Raveendran had disclosed on the opening day  that he had shares in both companies owned by the warring brothers, in equal numbers. Yesterday, the judge disclosed on the web the shares he held in all Reliance companies, including those held by his wife. What was then not known to him was his daughter’s indirect link with RIL.

One critical time in the history of recusals in the Supreme Court was when Maruti’s people’s car was launched in the early 1980s. The company reportedly gifted a car to each of the then sitting judges. Some declined to take it. Later, a case was filed against the largesse distributed by the then government company.

Since most of the judges had accepted the small car, which was then more a status symbol than utilitarian, the case was shunted from one bench to another, until a set of judges was spotted who had not accepted it. Another minor crisis was reported when the cell phone was introduced and the Chief Justice had to search for judges who had not accepted gifted phones to hear certain cases.