Courts Should Not Bow down To Browbeating By Litigants And Recuse Itself From Hearing Cases: Calcutta HC [Read Order]

A judge has to ensure that judicial process is insulated from scheming parties trying to circumvent the process by belated pleas of recusal, said a Calcutta High Court bench which was forced to undertake the “unsavoury” exercise of deciding a plea of its own bias stemming from its use of expression “ progress of trial ”.A bench of Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Ravi Krishan. A judge has to ensure that judicial process is insulated from scheming parties trying to circumvent the process by belated pleas of recusal, said a Calcutta High Court bench which was forced to undertake the “unsavoury” exercise of deciding a plea of its own bias stemming from its use of expression “ progress of trial ”. Not likely to generate fear of apprehension “From the sequence of events as narrated above, we feel persuaded to observe that neither the recall of the oral unsigned order by this bench on 18th May, 2018 nor the use of the expression ‘progress of trial’ in the order dated 20th June, 2018 can be construed to be circumstances which are likely to generate an impression of bias in the mind of any litigant far less one who is an advocate practicing law,” said the bench. Scheming parties and belated pleas of recusal “We have no doubt in our mind that the use of the aforesaid expression could not have caused any reasonable apprehension of bias or prejudice in the mind of a man of ordinary prudence far less the petitioner, who claims to be a practicing advocate…On the other hand, the conduct of the petitioner in seeking adjournments before the trial court on one plea or the other and thereafter belatedly raising the instant plea for recusal clearly exposes his intention to unnecessarily delay the proceeding.