New Delhi: Till late Sunday evening, Delhi High Court was yet to give any indication about a change in the roster or re-allocation of cases listed before Justice Yashwant Varma.
The court website released its routine cause list for listing and hearing of cases for Monday, March 24, but the listing gave no indication about work being withdrawn from Judge Varma, as per the directions of the Chief Justice of India.
The cause list still shows that he heads division bench number three and has cases listed for hearing along with his bench partner Justice Harish Vaidyanathan Shankar.
Highly placed sources hinted that a notification or note may be uploaded on the website on Monday, possibly transferring urgent matters listed before Justice Varma’s bench to other judge combinations so that later, regular cases can be re-assigned to other judges, and litigants don’t face any difficulty due to withdrawal of work from Justice Varma, who now faces a high-level inquiry.
Late Saturday night, the Supreme Court, in an unprecedented step, uploaded and made public on its website an in-house preliminary inquiry report into the alleged discovery of a cash pile at Judge Varma’s official residence following a fire incident. The purported discovery of the huge stash of cash occurred following a fire at Varma’s Lutyens Delhi address around 11.35pm on March 14, prompting Delhi fire department personnel to rush to the spot and douse it.
The report prepared by Delhi High Court Chief Justice DK Upadhyaya reveals that the Delhi Police commissioner informed him that Justice Varma’s personal secretary was the first to contact the police control room about the fire and that the DFS was not informed separately.
The 25-page inquiry report also included videos and photographs of the firefighting operation at Justice Varma’s residence on the night of Holi. After the preliminary report stated a deeper probe is required, Chief Justice of India Justice Sanjiv Khanna constituted a three-member in-house inquiry committee to probe the allegations against Justice Varma and also directed the Delhi High Court CJ not to assign him any judicial work.
