A bench of Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud with Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra said the claim made by the petitioner regarding conflict of interest on the part of Sundaresan was unsubstantiated.
When petitioner’s counsel advocate Prashant Bhushan pointed out that Sundaresan had appeared for the Adani Group as a lawyer in a matter before the Securities and Exchange Board of India (SEBI), the CJI said that the same was 17 years ago.
“He was not an in-house counsel [of the Adani Group], he was a lawyer. And he appeared in 2006 and this conflict arises 17 years later. Someone appeared 17 years ago; there has to be some responsibility of the allegations being levelled. This is very unfair to the committee, and then people will stop working for court appointed committees,” the CJI remarked.
The Court explained that rather than only limiting the members of the expert committee to retired judges, the Court had appointed diverse people on the said committee so as to ensure that it has domain expertise.
Further, it said that Bhushan was relying on only one such appearance of Sundaresan for Adani.
“You should have told on this on March 2, 2023 (when the committee was constituted) … So a lawyer who appeared 17 years ago can now not be appointed to the committee? Like this, no High Court judge can be appointed who appears for an accused ever, if this is to be taken. How can this be allowed? You have not even attached any more instances, and then how do we take these unsubstantiated allegations on record?”, the CJI added.
Sundaresan has currently stopped his law practice since he has been cleared for appointment as a judge of the Bombay High Court.
Source: Barandbench
