At three consecutive meetings of the Supreme Court collegium held to select high court chief justices, Justice Sabharwal faced dissent triggered by an RTI application related to a complaint of "misconduct" against acting chief justice of the Delhi High Court, Vijender Jain. 

It all began three months ago when Justice Sabharwal proposed to the collegium, comprising himself and the two senior-most judges of the Supreme Court, that Justice Jain be promoted as chief justice of the Bombay High Court. 

But Justice Sabharwal was forced to change his proposal for the Bombay High Court as one of the collegium members questioned his candidate's credentials citing a report in The Times of India, which disclosed in April that the RTI regulator, Central Information Commission, had sought information from the Supreme Court registry on the complaint against Justice Jain. 

Since the dissenting member subsequently retired during the summer vacation, Justice Sabharwal revived the proposal to promote Justice Jain, this time to head the Punjab and Haryana High Court. 

In the event, the collegium meeting held immediately after the apex court re-opened on July 3 threw up another dissenting voice from the reconstituted collegium. 

The new member too asserted that Justice Jain could not be considered for promotion in view of the complaint alleging that, in violation of the judicial code of conduct, he had decided a suit filed by somebody who had performed his granddaughter's wedding in Justice Jain's official residence. 

A fortnight later, the CJI made his third attempt to push Justice Jain at the collegium meeting held on July 17. The difference this time was that instead of calling just the two senior- most judges, Justice Sabharwal convened a five-member collegium, which is normally used for appointments to the Supreme Court. 

At the instance of the dissenting member, the CJI also consulted other SC judges who happened to be former chief justices of the Delhi High Court. At least two of them are learnt to have expressed reservations about the move to promote Justice Jain. 

Despite such discordant notes, Justice Sabharwal recommended Justice Jain's promotion on the strength of majority opinion in the collegium. 

The matter is now being proc-essed by the government before it is due to be placed before the President for him to sign the warrant of appointment. 

The CJI's support for Justice Jain is consistent with his administrative "order" in the RTI case on April 21 saying that he had "examined" the complaint against Justice Jain and found "no merit" in it. Justice Sabharwal, however, did not give any reasons for holding that the complaint lacked merit. 
 
 
 

Judiciary in Dock (Justice Vijender Kumar Jain)
Source Times of India April 14, 2006
New Delhi: A complaint of "misconduct" against the acting chief of Delhi High Court, Justice Vijender Kumar Jain, has put Supreme Court in the dock under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.
In an interface between RTI and judicial accountability, Central Information Commission directed Supreme Court on April 3 to disclose the status of the complaint against Justice Jain within 15 working days.
The court's registry will by then have to seek orders of Chief Justice of India Y K Sabharwal on the manner in which, information about the complaint can be given in keeping with, as the commission put it, "the decorum vital to the administration of justice in the highest court in the land".
Ironically, both Sabharwal and Jain have, in their own different ways, spearheaded the ongoing clean-up in Delhi: While a Supreme Court Bench headed by Justice Sabharwal has cracked down on shops in residential areas, a high court bench headed by Justice Jain has ordered the demolition of illegal constructions.
Further, four days after the commission passed the order related to the complaint against him, the government issued a notification on April 7 appointing Justice Jain as acting chief of the Delhi High Court.
Though the commission's order does not name Justice Jain and simply says that the complaint is against "a judge of the Delhi High Court", TOI discovered his identity by accessing the records of the commission.

Justice Vijender Kumar Jain
The complaint, which has not been made public, alleges that Justice Jain, violating norms set for judges, decided a suit filed by
somebody with whom he had "family relations".
The proof it cites of the alleged connection is a wedding card, which shows that the litigant, Hari Ram, performed the marriage of his granddaughter in April 2001 in what was then the official residence of Justice Jain: 12, Ashoka Road.
According to the complaint, Justice Jain, sitting singly, went on to conduct proceedings between October and December 2001 in Hari Ram's suit. Three years later, sitting in a two judge bench, Jain dealt with an appeal in the same matter and decided it in November 2004 in fervor of Hari Ram.
It was in such circumstances that, in January 2005, a member of the party that lost the case, Sub hash Chandra Agrawal, complained against Justice Jain to then chief justice of India R C Lahoti.
Justice Jain, when contacted, declined to comment, saying he was not aware of the complaint at all. Agrawal too refused to talk to Times of India saying he was awaiting CJFs response to the commission's direction on his complaint.
The commission came into the picture as Agrawal, a businessman from the walled city of Delhi, invoked RTI Act in October
2005 to find out the status of his complaint. Following his application under RTI Act, the public information officer of the Supreme Court informed Agrawal in November that the complaint had been "kept on record in the relevant high court file". Agrawal again drew a blank, when he filed the first appeal, as provided in RTI Act, before a superior officer in the Supreme Court registry.
Subsequently, Agrawal filed the second appeal before Central Information Commission, which is an independent appellate body set up under RTI Act.
On February 7, a Bench of the commission consisting of Wajahat Habibullah and Padma Bala-subramanian held that the Supreme Court registry's reply to Agrawal was "clouded in obscurity, as it did not indicate the manner of accessing the information (on the status of the complaint) nor the form of redress that the appellant might seek".
Going back to the commission within a fortnight, the Supreme Court registry clarified that Agrawal's complaint had actually not been sent to the Delhi High Court as the apex court had "no administrative jurisdiction" over high court judges.
Therefore, whenever it received any such complaint, the registry can only place it before the chief justice of India and "thereafter it has no access to or information about the complaint".
Since the registry disclosed that the complaint against Justice Jain was still pending in the office of the chief justice of India, the commission passed its latest order on April 3 putting the onus on Justice Sabharwal to find a way within 15 working days of balancing the citizen's right to information with the "decorum" of the administration of justice.
Source Times of India April 14, 2006 Page 14