ADITYA BALLABH TRIPATHI Vs. KRISHNA SINGH RATHORE

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THREE young lawyers of this Court have filed this petition for initiating contempt of Court proceedings, against an officer occupying the post of Director General of Police and another, a newspaper Editor.

(2.) THIS is not a motion by 'any other person with the consent in writing of the Advocate General in terms of Clause (b) of Section 15(1) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971. It is not even stated that Advocate General was approached to give consent. The petition can at best be treated as information to this Court to take suo motu action. If it is information, as it can be nothing else, it was wrong on the part of the lawyers to have styled themselves as petitioners and to show the alleged contemners as non -petitioners. The Supreme Court in P. N. Duda v. P. Shivshankar in (1988) 3 SCC 167 in paragraph 54 of the report has approved of the directions given by Delhi High Court in such matters. The information even though lodged in the form of a petition, inviting the High Court to take action under the Contempt of Courts Act or Article 215 of the Constitution, should not, if the informant is not one of the persons named in Section 15 of the said Act, be registered as a petition and should not be placed for admission on the judicial side. On the other hand, such a petition should be placed before the Chief Justice for orders in chambers and the Chief Justice may decide either by himself or in consultation with the other Judges of the Court whether to take any cognizance of the information. The proper title of such a proceeding should be 'In re....(the alleged contemners)'. The present petition having been however filed and also entertained, it may not be proper to dismiss it on the above point of procedure.

(3.) 'Justice is not a cloistered virtue: She must be allowed to suffer the scrutiny and respectful, even though outspoken, comments of ordinary men.' - - said Lord Atkin in Ambar v. Attorney General for Trinidad and Tobago in 1936 A.C. 322, (335). Administration of justice and Judges is open to public criticism and public scrutiny. Such criticism should in fact be welcomed, so long as it does not impair or hamper the administration of justice or does not lower the respect for the judiciary or destroy public confidence in it. But there should not exist any wrong impression, if such exists that denigrating or decrying a particular judge may amount to contempt but general criticism, howsoever vile, malicious or spitful of the Judicial system as such, can never amount to contempt.