Ex-CJI Kabir refutes charges of halting Gujarat HC judge's elevation to SC

New Delhi: Former Chief Justice of India Altamash Kabir on Tuesday rejected charges that he stalled the elevation of Gujarat High Court's Chief Bhaskar Bhattacharya to the Supreme court.

Altamash Kabir had been accused of stalling Bhattacharya's elevation to the Supreme court after Bhattacharya had opposed Justice Kabir's sister's elevation as a Calcutta High Court judge.

Altamash Kabir, who demitted office on July 19, has also clarified that he played no role in the elevation of his sister as High Court judge. Kabir wrote a letter defending himself to the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, President Pranab Mukherjee and Bhattacharya himself.

He also dismissed the innuendoes of "ill motive" imputed to him for the bench headed by him granting more time to Sahara's real estate and finance companies to deposit their instalment to market regulator SEBI even though the matter was being dealt with by the bench of Justice KS Radhakrishnan and Justice JS Khehar.

The apex court had asked the Sahara group companies to deposit the investors' money that it had mopped up to the market regulator so it could be returned to the investors.

Justice Kabir said that though it was the unanimous decisions of the collegium - comprising five senior most judges of the apex court - not to elevate Bhattacharya but the way the story was presented it gave the "impression that it was my individual bias which prevented the Gujarat Chief Justice from beinhg given berth in the Supreme Court".

Similarly, he said that proposal to elevate a chief justice of a High Court hailing from Madhya Pradesh was not something that had cropped up at the July 2 meeting of the collegium suddenly at his instance. He said that the meeting was convened on July 2 because other members had suggested so when he wanted to call a meeting before the apex court went into summer recess.

On the Sahara matter, he said that he gave the company extended time to deposit the second instalment because "we felt that it would be in the interest of the depositors, to extend the time for depositing such instalments by a short period, as that would give them a chance to recover their dues quickly, instead of having to wait till SEBI attached and sold the properties of Sahara which could turn out to be a long drawn affair".

(With additional Information From IANS)