Two advocates fail to become judges for criminal charges

JABALPUR/BHOPAL: A division bench of

Madhya Pradesh high court

dismissed petitions of two advocates challenging decision of the the high court scrutiny committee, which had denied them appointment as district judge (entry level) despite their selection on the post in an examination conducted by the high court in 2017, because they were tried in criminal cases, though they had been acquitted by the courts.


The division bench of Chief Justice S K Seth and Justice V K Shukla, in a common judgement on separate petitions filed by Deep Narayan Tiwari and Nand Kishore Sahu, referred to full bench judgement of high court in Ashutosh Pawar vs High Court of MP in which the question referred to court was whether acquittal in criminal cases is a proof of good conduct.

The full bench after referring to the judgement of the Supreme Courtrendered in the case of Union territory Chandigarh administration and others vs Pradeep Kumar and another (2018) held that mere acquittal in a criminal case would not be sufficient to infer that a candidate possesses a good character.

In its judgement, the full bench had said, “The court can’t issue any direction for appointment of a candidate from the date the other candidates were appointed as such is not the jurisdiction vested in the HC under Article 226 .”