KATHMANDU, NOVEMBER 3
Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher JB Rana has referred cases that prevented the constitutional bench from hearing petitions filed against appointments to the constitutional bodies to the constitutional bench yesterday.
CJ Rana took the decision yesterday in the wake of continued protest by the Nepal Bar Association, the Supreme Court Bar Association, and 15 justices of the Supreme Court.
The NBA and the SCBA have sought CJ Rana’s resignation for seeking to get his brother-in-law appointed as a minister in the Sher Bahadur Deuba Cabinet and delaying the hearing of cases filed against appointments to the constitutional bodies.
According to Supreme Court Spokesperson Baburam Dahal, Rana referred the two petitions filed by Ganesh Regmi and Dipak Bikram Mishra that are sub judice in a division bench to the constitutional bench.
On September 2, a single bench of Justice Hari Prasad Phuyal had issued the interim order in response to a writ petition filed by Advocate Ganesh Regmi against the Supreme Court and others arguing that CJ’s recusal in the case related to appointments to the constitutional bodies was not in accordance with the law that stipulated that the chief justice should preside over the constitutional bench. As a result of this stay order, the constitutional bench halted the hearing of cases filed against appointments to the constitutional bodies.
A Supreme Court justice told THT that Rana’s refusal to conduct hearing of the constitutional bench was one of the key reasons for the crisis engulfing the judiciary and if he had done earlier what he did yesterday, things could have been different.
The justice said since protesting justices were hearing only habeas corpus writ petitions, they would discuss how they should proceed after the court opens after Tihar holidays.
“Hearing only the cases listed for the constitutional bench will not look good as we have announced that we will not hear other cases apart from habeas corpus petitions.
We will sit for consultation after Tihar festival and decide what we should do next,” the justice added. He said other justices were hearing habeas corpus petitions only as CJ Rana had agreed not to hear any case and list only habeas corpus petitions for other justices.
President of the SCBA Purna Man Shakya said bar associations had been telling the CJ to refer the Regmi case to the constitutional bench, but despite his agreement with bar representatives he did not refer it to the constitutional bench. Instead, he formed a division bench to hear the Regmi case after which the bar refused to send amicus curiae, he added.
Under Article 137 (3), the chief justice has the power to refer any case related to a serious constitutional question to the constitutional bench.
“We had been telling him to refer this case to the constitutional bench since long,” Shakya said.
A version of this article appears in the print on November 04, 2021, of The Himalayan Times.