On a day when former Supreme Court judge Justice CK Prasad took over as the new Press Council of India Chairman, lawyer-activist Prashant Bhushan wrote to Prime Minister Narendra Modi citing how the retired judge allegedly abused his office during his tenure in the apex court to benefit a private party.
Attaching to his letter a confidential note written by a senior member of the SC Bar informing the then Chief Justice of the incident involving Justice Prasad, advocate Bhushan urged the Prime Minister that the judge was liable for prosecution under the Prevention of Corruption Act and questioned his appointment as PCI Chairman.
The allegation against Justice Prasad is that he illegally withdrew a matter from another bench and heard it with a petition pending before him and passed orders on it despite knowing that another bench had entertained it.
Bhushan’s letter said, “Both the matters when came up for hearing on February 25, 2014, Justice Prasad accepted the submission of CU Singh, senior advocate that both the matters are not connected to each other…in the absence of any effective representation from City and Industrial Development Corporation of Maharashtra (which was involved in both matters), the civil appeal was allowed without any debate. This was despite the fact that settlement was rejected earlier by a different bench of the Supreme Court on April 25, 2013.”
Meanwhile, Justice Prasad on his first day in office said it was better to have an “irresponsible media than a controlled media” in a democracy asserting that protection of Press freedom would be his top priority.
Prasad, however, clarified that he was expressing his own views and they may not necessarily be the views of the Press Council, which will always be decided collectively.