Justice Karnan episode is indeed disgraceful
In matters of judicial hierarchy, it cannot get weirder than this. A judge of the Madras High Court, CS Karnan, has ‘stayed' the Chief Justice of India's proposal to transfer him to the Calcutta High Court. He did so, suo motu. This is not all. Justice Karnan has claimed that the two-judge Bench of the Supreme Court, which was informed of his suo motu judicial order, is targeting him because he is a Dalit. He now wants Chennai Police to act against the apex court judges by invoking provisions of the SC/ST Prevention of Atrocities Act. This is bizarre and Justice Karnan is crossing all limits and wanting a fight that can only be unsavoury in public. Prima facie, he does not seem to be worried about the negative implications his actions will have on the reputation of the country's highest court, and is merely concerned with projecting his ‘victimhood’. The truth is that Justice Karnan is taking his grievance — even if for a moment one accepts his argument as valid — too far. It's also a fact that, given his conduct, the apex court had directed the Chief Justice of Madras High Court to divest Justice Karnan from all administrative and judicial functions. Justice Karnan's attempt to play the caste card is especially deplorable, since at least judges should not be employing tricks that politicians are adept at. That Justice Karnan is needlessly hypersensitive on the issue is evident from his reported remark that he would not hesitate to migrate to another country where caste discrimination did not exist! Justice Karnan holds that the Chief Justice of India had interfered in his jurisdiction by seeking his transfer. If this amounts to interference, who then, if not the Chief Justice of India, is the administrative authority to direct the transfer of judges of High Courts across the countryIJ Justice Karnan claimed that he was in the midst of finalising an order; as per the apex court's directive to the High Court's Chief Justice, he is not to be assigned any judicial function.
Justice Karnan has had a problematic record, with a tendency to dramatise incidents. Barely two years after he took charge at the Madras High Court, Justice Karnan alleged that a brother judge had deliberately brushed his legs on him at a social function to demean him, because he was a Dalit. On another occasion, he charged into a courtroom where a Division Bench was hearing a petition relating to names that had been recommended for the post of judges, and claimed that the selection process was unfair and worthy of challenge. In early 2014, an exasperated Supreme Court was moved to remark that Justice Karnan's conduct had become “indecorous”. The then Chief Justice of Madras High Court wrote to the apex court seeking Justice Karnan's exit from his court, leading to Justice Karnan branding him ‘anti-Dalit'. The present situation is derived, therefore, from these and a few other equally shocking past incidents. One hopes that the matter comes to an end at the earliest.