I was on verge of being impeached: Katju

Former Supreme Court judge Markandey Katju says he was on the verge of being impeached when he was in the Allahabad High Court in 1992 after he ordered the reinstatement of a teacher whose appointment was cancelled by school authorities in Uttar Pradesh.

He also feels that the process of appointing the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court as the Chief Justice of India should be done away with as this "convention has proved to be defective".

Katju, who also served as the Chief Justice of the Delhi and the Madras High Court, and as acting Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court, has come out with a book "Whither Indian Judiciary" in which he takes an analytical inside view of the Indian judiciary.

On the appointment of the CJI, he writes, "The senior-most judge may be a man of integrity but may be mediocre person. He should be superseded and a judge next in seniority or one even lower down in seniority, if outstanding (as borne out from his judgments), should be made Chief Justice of India."
On the near-impeachment episode, he recalls, "I was appointed a permanent judge of the Allahabad High Court in November 1991, and was almost sacked a few months thereafter."