New Delhi: Two judges at the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) have recused themselves from hearing cases involving whistleblower Indian Forest Service (IFS) officer Sanjiv Chaturvedi, taking the total number of judicial recusals in his cases to 13.
On February 19, CAT bench of judges Harvinder Kaur Oberoi and B. Anand recused themselves from a matter involving Chaturvedi’a appraisal report and directed the registry not to list his cases further without providing further reasoning, the Times of India has reported.
The report said that the total recusals have now reached 13 with two Supreme Court judges, two Uttarakhand high court judges, CAT chairman, a Shimla trial court judge and seven CAT judges from Allahabad and Delhi refraining from adjudicating his cases.
In February 2024, Uttarakhand high court judge Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari had recused himself from one of Chaturvedi’s cases. In 2018, the high court had said that all of Chaturvedi’s service matters are to be heard at the Nainital circuit bench, which was later upheld by the Supreme Court, Chaturvedi’s lawyer Sudershan Goel was quoted as saying.
In March 2021, a member of the Nainital bench of CAT recused himself from hearing Chaturvedi’s plea challenging the Union government’s 360-degree appraisal system for officers at the joint secretary level and above, and the recruitment of private professionals into government through lateral entry, citing that his ‘relative counsels’ might have appeared for respondents in the matter.
In January that year, L. Narasimha Reddy, the chairman of CAT, which adjudicates service-related matters of government employees, had recused himself from hearing a plea by Chaturvedi which challenged the civil servants’ empanelment process.
The Times of India report said that the recusals in his cases go as far back as 2013, when then Supreme Court judge and now Rajya Sabha MP Justice Ranjan Gogoi withdrew from hearing his case seeking a CBI probe into alleged corruption and harassment cases involving former Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda as well as other politicians and bureaucrats.
In 2016, former Chief Justice of India U.U. Lalit, who was then a Supreme Court judge, also recused from the same case. In 2018, a Shimla trial court judge recused himself from a defamation case against Chaturvedi, while in 2019, then-CAT chairman Reddy also recused from hearing Chaturvedi’s transfer petitions.
Chaturvedi was honoured with the prestigious Ramon Magsaysay Award in 2015 for exposing corruption in public offices. During his tenure as director vigilance at All India Institute of Medical Sciences, Delhi, from 2012 and 2016, he had investigated around 200 corruption cases.
He had filed the case against the Union government’s appraisal system after nine private sector specialists were appointed as joint secretaries in different central government departments in August 2019 through the “lateral entry” mode, following their selection by the Union Public Service Commission (UPSC).
Chaturvedi challenged the lateral entry system citing an August 2017 report by a parliamentary committee which stated that the 360-degree appraisal system, also known as the multi-source feedback system for civil servants, was flawed.
