Your headline in today’s edition of The Indian Express that the Supreme Court collegium has okayed a High Court Judge’s transfer from Gujarat High Court to Sikkim High Court, if correct, is most distressing— not because the concerned Judge in question deserves sympathy (he does not), but it is unfair on the people and litigating public of the State of Sikkim and it is a slur on the High Court of Sikkim which under our Constitution has the same status as any other High Court in the country.

Why should the people of Sikkim be subjected (and this is not the first time that this has happened in recent years) to receive a particular Judge considered by his peers to be a dishonour to the High Court in which he sits?

We must by law immediately introduce appropriate ways to discipline errant High Court Judges, short of removal: as they do with Federal Judges who are appointed for life in the United States. But till we have such a law the Chief Justice of the High Court must take it upon himself not to allot any work to the Judge concerned: that is they only way to discipline the Judge, short of removal (and removal of High Court Judges has been deliberately made by Constitution a very cumbersome and difficult process only in order to maintain the independence of good and honourable Judges).

The expedient of not giving work was devised by bold and sagacious Chittatosh Mookerjee when he was Chief Justice of Bombay many years ago. And I recall that when the four Judges of the Bombay High Court who were then not allotted any work under orders of the Chief Justice, protested to him, Chief Justice Mookerjee invited them to challenge his administrative order on the judicial side of the High Court by filing a Writ Petition under Article 226 of the Constitution: but not a single Writ Petition was filed by any one of them.

... contd.