HC withdraws work from 39 judges

CHANDIGARH: In an apparent attempt to weed out the persons who were considered to have gained entry into the Punjab Civil Service (Judicial) allegedly through unfair means during the tenure of the Punjab Public Service Commission (PPSC) chief Ravinder Pal Singh Sidhu, the Punjab and Haryana Hugh Court has withdrawn work from 39 PCS (Judicial) officers with immediate effect.
A batch of PCS (executive) consisting of 46 people lost their jobs consequent to the job scam in PPSC and the HC declining to stay the stay orders issued by the government.
A decision to this effect was taken on Monday evening in a full court meeting attended by all the judges and chaired by chief justice Arun B Saharya. Inquiries indicate that after the meeting, a senior functionary of the high court was assigned the task to convey the orders telephonically to all the persons concerned. However, the decision was kept pending in regard to 18 other persons who were selected for PCS (Judicial) but appointment and posting orders were yet to be issued.
The action comes in the wake of completion of examination of the cases of these officers, including the answersheets pertaining to their examination, by a special committee of judges headed by the chief justice.
While the decision was taken on Monday evening, there was some further discussion on the subject in the full court meeting on Tuesday afternoon. However, officially no list of affected judicial officers was available.
Those handed down the withdrawal of judicial work belonged to various batches of PCS (Judicial) between 1999 to 2001 but a majority of them were from the latter batch. It included among others Amol Gill, judicial magistrate posted at Chandigarh who is the daughter of Justice Amarbir Singh Gill who happens to be one of the three Judges of the high court from whom the work had been withdrawn from July 1, 2002 in an unprecedented and rare exercise of authority by the chief justice of the high court. The other two judges from whom work was withdrawn are ML Singhal and Mehtab Singh Gill. A PIL seeking to quash the order of withdrawal of work from judges too was preferred. The judgment on the same was reserved by the division bench of Justices G S Singhvi and Kiran Anand Lall.
The following names of PCS officers divested of work were available till the news last came in: Moga: Mohammad Gurjar; Ferozepur: Rajnish, Gurnam Singh Dhillon and Mansa: Avtar Singh Patiala: Of the five judges of Patiala district from whom work has been withdrawn, one was serving at Rajpura while the others were serving at Patiala.
On Tuesday, 47 cases listed for hearing before the civil judge junior division (CJJD) Arun Aggarwal were transferred to the court of CJM Paramjit Singh, 31 cases to be taken up by CJJD Shatin Goyal were transferred to the court of CJJD Mewa Singh; 66 cases of CJJD Gopal Arora were transferred to the court of CJJD SS Mann and 44 cases of CJJD Jagdip Kaur’s court were transferred to the court of additional civil judge senior division Ranjit Kumar Jain.