Chennai: Chief Justice of Madras High Court Vijaya Kamlesh Tahilramani has decided to resign rather than accept the steep climb-down in her transfer as CJ of the much smaller Meghalaya High Court decided by the Supreme Court Collegium recently. She had appealed to the Collegium to reconsider the transfer but her request was turned down.
Sources said CJ Tahilramani stated her decision to resign at a judges’ dinner late Friday evening. “I have decided to resign”, the Chief Justice reportedly told her colleagues, bringing the curtain down — for the moment at least — on the raging controversy that erupted when it became known that the SC Collegium had on August 28 decided to swap the Chief Justices of the High Courts at Madras and Meghalaya. Accordingly, Chief Justice A K Mittal was to take over from Chief Justice Tahilramani in Madras while she would have to take his position at Meghalaya.
CJ Tahilramani is likely to send her resignation in the required format to the President of India in a day or two, according to sources.
The transfer decision raised several eyebrows as it would move the CJ of the fourth largest High Court in the country with a sanctioned strength of 75 judges to perhaps the smallest HC in Meghalaya that has only three judges, including the Chief Justice, and was set up only in March 2013. The Madras High Court was established by the British in 1862 along with only two other chartered HCs at Bombay and Calcutta.
Among the senior-most CJs in the country and one of the two women High Court CJs, Tahilramani wrote to the SC Collegium appealing for reconsideration of the transfer decision. Her request was turned down.
“The Collegium has carefully gone through the aforesaid representation and taken into consideration all relevant factors. On reconsideration, the Collegium is of the considered view that it is not possible to accede to her request. The Collegium, accordingly, reiterated its recommendation dated August 28, 2019, for transfer of Justice V.K. Tahilramani to Meghalaya HC”, was the Collegium response. Tahilramani had taken oath as CJ of the Madras HC on August 12 last year, transferred from the Bombay HC where she had acted as CJ thrice during 2015-17. She had presided over several sensitive and important cases - such as her verdict on May 4, 2017, upholding the life term for 11 convicts in the gang rape of Bilkis Bano and the murder of her family during the 2002 Gujarat riots. She had also set aside the acquittal of seven persons in that case, including two doctors and five police officials while convicting them under sections 201 (tampering of evidence) and 218 (not performing duties) of IPC.
