On Friday, the Supreme Court blocked the Calcutta High Court’s order suspending Keshav Chandra, the chief secretary of the Andaman and Nicobar Islands, and fining Admiral DK Joshi, the lieutenant governor of the Union Territory (UT), Rs 5 lakh for disobeying a previous court order.
The plea was also given notice, and the matter was scheduled for hearing on August 11 by a bench consisting of Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and Justices JB Pardiwala and Manoj Misra.
After Attorney General for India R. Venkataramani mentioned an appeal against the High Court ruling and noted that the orders appeared to be a little excessive, the supreme court stayed the judgement of the Port Blair bench of the Calcutta High Court.
“For such an order to be issued, you must have something truly drastic… Next week, we’ll continue in these two directions and list this. The bench stayed the order and remarked that the suspension and penalties were a touch excessive.
A division bench of Justices Rajasekhar Mantha and Bibhas Ranjan De on Thursday said that the two high functionaries made a ‘mockery’ of the contempt of court proceedings initiated against them and, therefore, directed both of them to be present in court on the next date of hearing.