KATHMANDU, Oct 23: Chief Justice (CJ) Cholendra SJB Rana has landed in a fresh controversy after former CJs raised questions over his professional integrity and commitment to uphold the independence of the judiciary.
Arguing that repeated controversial moves of CJ Rana had eroded public trust in the judiciary and damaged the integrity of the judiciary, a group of former chief justices has called upon the House of Representatives (HoR) to fulfill its constitutional responsibility if Rana doesn’t step down on his own. The HoR can impeach Chief Justice Rana if it concludes that the chief of judiciary had failed to play his role honestly and professionally.
Reviving trust in judiciary
While a number of decisions made by the Supreme Court have fallen into serious controversies, Chief Justice Rana courted a serious controversy most recently for his “bargain to make his brother in law a minister” in the Sher Bahadur Deuba-led Cabinet. A fresh controversy has surfaced in the legal fraternity after Chief Justice Rana expressed his reluctance to implement a lottery system to allocate cases for hearing at the Supreme Court though he had agreed for the same in the past.
Earlier, Nepal Bar Association and other stakeholders had demanded implementing an automated case allocation system. There was an agreement to implement a lottery system until the automated case allocation system is put in place.
Prior to this, Chief Justice Rana had courted controversy as a section of the media reported that he had sought his share in the appointments to various constitutional bodies. Writ petitioners have alleged that Chief Justice Rana has been deferring the case related to the appointments to various constitutional bodies.
Issuing a paper entitled Analysis of the Current State of Judiciary on the occasion of the sixth general assembly of the Society of Former Justices on Friday, former chief justices have concluded that the judiciary had fallen in crisis due to its own leadership. The former chief justices in a press statement signed by former CJ Top Bahadur Singh have called upon all justices and Nepal Bar Association to come forward to make the judiciary free of controversy.
