The Supreme Court in a recent Judgement whle referring to various Judgements has Summarised law on the subject of compulsory retirement and held that:
- An order directing Compulsory Retirement of a Judicial Officer is not Punitive In Nature;
- An order directing compulsory retirement of a Judicial Officer has no civil consequences;
- While considering the case of a Judicial Officer for Compulsory retirement the entire record of the Judicial Officer should be taken into consideration, though the latter and more contemporaneous record must be given more weightage;
- Subsequent Promotions do not mean that earlier adverse record cannot be looked into while deciding whether a Judicial Officer should be compulsorily retired;
- The ‘washed off’ theory does not apply in case of judicial officers specially in respect of adverse entries relating to integrity;
- courts should exercise their power of judicial review with great circumspection and restraint keeping in view the fact that compulsory retirement of a Judicial Officer is normally directed on the recommendation of a highpowered committee(s) of the High Court.
Reffering to various allegations against the Judicial Officers, The Bench observed that:
As is obvious from the law quoted above, adverse entries with regard to integrity do not lose their sting at any stage. A judicial officer’s integrity must be of a higher order and even a single aberration is not permitted. As far as the present cases are concerned, the matter has been considered by the Screening Committee on two occasions and the recommendations of the Screening Committee have been accepted by the Standing Committee on both occasions. The action taken is not by one officer or Judge, it is a collective decision, first by the Screening Committee and then approved by the Standing Committee. Unless there are allegations of mala fides or the facts are so glaring that the decision of compulsory retirement is unsupportable this court would not exercise its power of judicial review. In such matters the court on the judicial side must exercise restraint before setting aside the decision of such collective bodies comprising of senior High Court Judges. In our opinion these are not fit cases to interfere with the said decisions and dismissed both the Petitions.
The judgement has been delivered by Justice L. Nageswara Rao and Justice Deepak Gupta on 27-02-2020.
Read Judgement Here:
