The court referred to Reddy’s letter as the Chief Justice of India against the state judiciary, calling it ‘doubtless’.
The Andhra Pradesh High Court on Wednesday said the recent transfer of its chief justice, as well as the Telangana High Court, gave Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy an “undue advantage” in the pending cases against him, the Live Law reported.
This observation was made by Justice Rakesh Kumar while hearing a petition, where the Andhra Pradesh government had sought his absence from a bench in a case against Reddy. Kumar rejected the plea, saying it was “only a contempt action and it is highly demoted.”
Kumar also cited a letter sent by Reddy to Chief Justice of India SA Bobde in October, where the chief minister alleged that the state judiciary was under the influence of Supreme Court judge Justice NV Ramana.
“After the so-called letter of Honorable Chief Minister, people can object to this after the transfer of two Chief Justices i.e. Chief Justice of High Court of Telangana State and Chief Justice of High Court of AP,” Kumar said. , According to Live Law.
On 6 October, Reddy wrote to Bobde, alleging that Raman was influencing the meetings of the State High Court and asked him to consider taking steps to maintain the judicial neutrality of Andhra Pradesh.
On 14 December, the Supreme Court Collegium recommended the transfer of four High Court Chief Justices including Andhra Pradesh and Telangana.
On Wednesday, Kumar, without questioning the collegium’s decision, observed that the transfer of High Court judges and chief justices “may reflect some transparency”. He described Reddy’s letter as “mindless” and suggested that the transfer gave him an unfair advantage.
“Naturally by the said transfer, the cases pending in the Court of Special Judge for CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation] in Hyderabad against Mr. YS Jagan Mohan Reddy and others may be delayed,” he said.
The court pointed out that several criminal cases were pending against Reddy, besides other cases filed by the Enforcement Directorate. “Surprisingly though the cases have been pending since 2011 and to date, no charges have been framed in any of the cases,” Kumar said. “Isn’t this messing with the system?”
Kumar further said that he got information about the cases against Reddy on the search engine Google. He said after Reddy’s letter to the Chief Justice of India, he was eager to know about the cases against the Chief Minister. “After this, I was told that if I go to ‘Google’ and only” Khadi [prisoner] no. 6093 “If I type, I can get information,” he said. “Accordingly, I did the same thing and after that, I got very disturbing information.”
Apart from dismissing the petition for Kumar’s removal from the case, the court also said that Pravin Kumar, an official of the state government, had given an affidavit on which the petition was based, containing “untrue and inaccurate” information and that Perez. Amounted to, live law was reported. The court ordered criminal proceedings against the officer to be initiated and issued a show-cause notice for contempt action against him.