NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court on Tuesday allowed the petition relating to disproportionate assets of former Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan to be withdrawn and was asked to follow appropriate procedure in the case.
A bench of Justices Arun Mishra and M Shantanagoudar allowed petitioner NGO Common Cause counsel Prashant Bhushan to withdraw the plea and follow the appropriate steps before approaching it.
This comes after four years the petition came up for hearing.
The bench also took note of the prayers which has been rendered infructuous of removing Justice Balakrishnan from the post of NHRC Chairmanship as he has retired from the post already.
During the brief hearing, the bench asked Bhushan as to what is the procedure to be followed now with change in circumstances of the case as the person has retired from the post already. Bhushan said, “An FIR needs to be registered.”
“Have you filed a complaint for that? If not this is pre-mature”, said Justice Mishra. Bhushan then said that he will withdraw the petition.
The court agreed and granted the petitioner liberty to approach appropriate authority.
In 2013, NGO had moved the apex court alleging amassment of disproportionate assets by Justice Balakrishnan.
It was urged that this instance raised serious concerns regarding the accountability of judiciary in the country and that the Court should direct the CBI to register a preliminary enquiry into the charges of disproportionate assets against Justice Balakrishnan under the Prevention of Corruption Act. The court was not willing to address the contentions regarding ‘benami’ properties allegedly acquired by him but observed that the source of income had not been duly examined by the Income Tax authorities and the issue could be looked into.
Subsequently, when the matter came up for hearing in November 2015, the Centre had tried to shoot down the case saying that there cannot be CBI investigation in such cases as it would encourage “wild allegations”.
Later, in February 2017, Bhushan had moved an application in the Supreme Court seeking SIT or CBI probe and seeking amendment of the earlier prayer, which had sought Justice Balakrishnan’s removal from the post of chairperson of NHRC.