Apex court moves Delhi High Court over judges’ assets
Sidharth Misra
October 5th, 2009 - 5:46 pm ICT by IANS - ThaiIndian.Com
New Delhi, Oct 5 (IANS) The Supreme Court Monday moved the Delhi High
Court to challenge its ruling that the office of the chief justice of
India came within the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. The
high court had also made it mandatory for apex court judges to
disclose their assets.
The case is likely to be heard Tuesday.
Supreme Court officials pointed out that the apex court had two
options to contest the high court’s single-judge ruling.
The first option was to challenge it before a division bench of the
high court and the second was to take it up before itself (Supreme
Court) through a Special Leave Petition, the officials said.
Wary of being seen as sitting in judgment over its own case, the apex
court decided to adopt the normal route of contesting the ruling
before a high court division bench instead of taking it up before
itself.
Earlier, in a letter to Delhi resident Subhash Chandra Agrawal, on
whose plea the Central Information Commission (CIC) had directed the
disclosure of the apex court judges’ assets, the Supreme Court’s
Additional Registrar Rajpal Arora informed him that the apex court was
all set to move the high court.
“An appeal against the judgment of the learned single judge (of the
high court) dated Sep 2, 2009, in writ petition number 288 of 2009 has
been kept ready for filing. But the appeal has not been filed since
the Delhi High Court has been on vacation and the registry is closed,”
Arora said in his communication to Agrawal.