Ahmedabad

The Gujarat high court has terminated the services of the remaining 84 class 3 and 4 employees recruited this year by the then Acting Chief Justice V M Sahai, who had raised a storm of sorts in the judicial circles by issuing show cause notices to several senior judges including 3 high court chief justices and a Supreme Court judge for alleged irregularity in residential plot allotment to them here in 2010 soon before his retirement last month.

Office of the Registrar General of the court today confirmed the development. Sources in the Registrar General office said, ‘ a total of 94 recruitments were made using powers vested under article 229 (1) of the constitution. But there were many technical flaws in the adopted selection procedure. Show cause notices were served to all of them almost three weeks ago and 10 of them had tendered resignations soon after which were accepted. After due consideration of the replies of the remaining ones, by the judges committee, it was decided to terminate their services of all of them. They were served the termination notices late last evening. The jobs were of temporary nature.’

Allegations of arbitrariness and favouritism were levelled after the former ACJ recruited 94 people in Class 3 and 4 categories. Senior judges’ opposition to these recruitments erupted into a major controversy that got further fuelled when Justice Sahai filed a suo motu PIL highlighting alleged irregularity in allotment of plots to HC judges in 2010 by the state government here.

After big embarrassment, the Supreme Court intervened quickly and stayed proceedings in the plot allotment case.

The High Court in its notice to the appointees had asked them to explain why their appointments should not be terminated because they were made without following proper selection procedure. They were also asked to disclose the source of information that posts were vacant and that was likely to be filled up as many people were recruited the day after they applied for the posts.

Barely two days before his retirement, Justice Sahai had taken up the suo motu cognizance of the PIL based on letters written by retired Justices B J Sethna and Kshitij R Vyas, who alleged that there were irregularities in the allotment of 48 plots to sitting and retired judges by the Gujarat government. Justice Sahai heard the PIL on urgent basis last month and issued notices to all the judges by making them respondents in the PIL. The issuance of notice to 27 sitting and retired judges of the high court lead to controversy and acrimony in the judiciary.

A day later Gujarat Advocate General Kamal Trivedi raked up an alleged scam in recruitment of Class-3 and Class- 4 employees in the high court by the order of Justice Sahai. Following this revelation, Justice Sahai stunned the packed courtroom by alleging that there were many scams in the high court that had been overlooked. “I don’t want to open a Pandora’s box,” he had said.

🗃️ This story is from our archives and may contain outdated information.