Source – thewire.in<\/p>\n\n\n\n
New Delhi:<\/strong> A judicial officer, miffed at having been summoned to court for registering a case between two Muslims under the Hindu Marriage Act, on November 18 went on a verbal rampage at the Allahabad high court, flouting quite a few statutes and exposing the court to a scenario it was not exactly familiar with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The incident,\u00a0reported by legal news websites\u00a0The Leaflet\u00a0<\/em>and\u00a0LiveLaw<\/em>, takes quite a few turns and features at its centre one Manoj Kumar Shukla, who is principal judge of Sultanpur district. Shukla, a judicial officer in the rank of a district judge, had been asked to appear for a 2015 order he passed, where \u201cthe Original Suit No.85 of 2014,\u00a0Mohd. Irshad vs. Smt. Anjum Bano<\/em>\u00a0had been registered under Section 9 of the Hindu Marriage Act.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n First, Shukla told a division bench of the high court comprising Justices Anil Kumar and Saurabh Lavania that when the order was passed in 2015, he was not principal judge of Sultanpur. Indeed, according to the\u00a0official website of the Allahabad high court, he was the\u00a0additional district and sessions judge at\u00a0Jalaun between September 16, 2014 and May 8, 2017.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the court asked him who the principal judge was, Shukla went on his first tirade of the day, noting that he had been \u201cunnecessarily called\u201d and that the summons to him allegedly flouted Supreme Court directives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Then, the Leaflet<\/em> report says, \u201cHe further submitted that such types of mistakes are committed by a judicial officer, due to heavy rush of work in the Family Court and such errors are bound to take place as only one steno (judgment writer) has been provided for writing orders\/judgments.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the high court held that even under pressure, Shukla should have been duty bound to ensure that he was passing the correct order under the correct law, Shukla was incensed and reportedly began shouting quite loudly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Shukla then said that he had been summoned in the past too, by a bench of the high court consisting of Justice Mateen and then, Judge Upadhyay. The report says the court at this point requested him to take the names of the judges \u201cwith respect\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Unrelenting, Shukla ignored multiple cautions to hold forth on the manner in which the court functioned.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI do not care about anything,\u201d he was quoted as having said. He also added that he had been appointed in judicial service through the Uttar Pradesh Public Service Commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the\u00a0high court website, Shukla has been in judicial service since 1996 and is due to retire in 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The division bench, reportedly, took a dim view of Shukla\u2019s conduct and ordered to place the matter before the Chief Justice of the high court.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While much has been written and spoken of about the lack of bias and restraint that judges need to show while deciding cases, there exists little to determine how deeply judicial ethics may have been flouted with Shukla\u2019s recent misdemeanour.<\/p>\n\n\n\n A\u00a0blog post on the website\u00a0Legal Services India\u00a0<\/em>speaks of a 16-point code of conduct for judges, drafted by a committee of five judges, which was adopted in 1997 by the Supreme Court and high courts (except that of Gujarat).<\/p>\n\n\n\n Point 16 of the \u2018Code\u2019 may perhaps be considered relevant here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cEvery Judge must at all times be conscious that he is under the public gaze and there should be no act or omission by him which is unbecoming of the high office he occupies and the public esteem in which the office is held.\u201d<\/p>\n