A bench of justices V Ramasubramanian and Pankaj Mithal set aside an order of the Karnataka High Court that had quashed the dismissal.
The top court noted that the judge in question had passed the blame to his stenographer, claiming that the steno was inefficient.
Such a defence, the Court said, was unacceptable.
“A judicial officer cannot pronounce the concluding portion of his judgment in open court without the entire text of the judgment being prepared/dictated. All that the respondent has done in the departmental enquiry is just to pass on the responsibility to the inefficient and allegedly novice stenographer. We do not know how the findings with regard to such serious charges have been completely white-washed by the High Court in the impugned judgment,” the apex court said.
The bench further noted that some of the charges revolved around judicial pronouncements and decision-making process and thus could not form the foundation of departmental proceedings.
However, the Court said that the charges of gross negligence and callousness in not preparing judgments but providing a fait accompli was completely unacceptable and unbecoming of a judicial officer.
“The defence taken by the respondent that the lack of experience and the inefficiency on the part of the stenographer has to be blamed, for the whole text of the judgment not getting ready even after several days of pronouncement of the result in open court, was entirely unacceptable,” the Court ruled.
But unfortunately, the High Court not only accepted this panchatantra story, but also went to the extent of blaming the administration for not examining the stenographer as a witness, the Court observed.
“Such an approach is wholly unsustainable,” the Supreme Court underlined.
Source: Barandbench
