The Supreme Court has partly rolled back its earlier rebuke of Justice Prashant Kumar of the Allahabad High Court, yet a critical directive stripping him of criminal cases appears to remain alive, at least in the text of its orders.
A Bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan, acting on a written request from Chief Justice of India BR Gavai, deleted paragraphs 25 and 26 of its August 4 ruling. These had barred Justice Kumar from handling any criminal matters until his retirement.
But paragraph 24 — the one telling the Allahabad High Court Chief Justice to “immediately withdraw the present criminal determination” from Justice Kumar — was not expressly removed. That means, on paper, the instruction still stands.
The August 4 directive had emerged from a case involving M/S Shikhar Chemicals, where Justice Kumar had refused to quash criminal proceedings arising from what the Supreme Court viewed as a purely commercial dispute. The apex court had expressed shock at his reasoning that criminal prosecution could substitute for slow-moving civil litigation, and then took the unusual step of issuing administrative orders curtailing his judicial work.
Those orders sparked unease within judicial circles. Thirteen judges of the Allahabad High Court, led by Justice Arindam Sinha, wrote to Chief Justice Arun Bhansali urging a full court meeting to push back against what they called “scathing” and procedurally questionable interference.
When the matter returned to the Supreme Court on August 8, the Bench stressed it did not seek to embarrass Justice Kumar but to safeguard the dignity of the institution. It acknowledged that the High Court’s Chief Justice is “master of the roster” and left further action to their discretion.
Even so, with paragraph 24 untouched, the earlier instruction to strip Justice Kumar of criminal law work lingers in black and white — leaving open the question of whether this was a calculated choice or a judicial oversight.
