A judicial member of of the Chennai bench of the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) recused himself from a case on Tuesday, just minutes before he was to pronounce the order, revealing that a judge “of a high constitutional court” had made several phone calls to him to tell him that a party in the case wished to “have a word.”
The NCLAT member, Justice Sharad Kumar Sharma, however, did not name the other judge.
Justice Sharma, who was presiding over the day’s hearings with technical member Jatindranath Swain, was expected to pronounce orders in the case, arguments for which were closed a month ago. However, when the serial number for the matter was called out, a visibly furious Justice Sharma expressed his disapproval of the appellant’s conduct. The counsel for the appellant however, told the tribunal he had no instructions or knowledge of what had transpired outside of the hearings.
The judicial member then unlocked the screen of his phone and asked the appellant’s counsel to take a look at his recent call logs. He then announced and recorded in his order that he was recusing from the case.
The case titled ‘Attluru Sreenivasulu Reddy Suspended Director of KLSR Infratech Limited Vs AS Met Corp Pvt ltd,’ pertains to an appeal filed in 2023 challenging an order admitting a Hyderabad-based company into the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.
{{/usCountry}}The case titled ‘Attluru Sreenivasulu Reddy Suspended Director of KLSR Infratech Limited Vs AS Met Corp Pvt ltd,’ pertains to an appeal filed in 2023 challenging an order admitting a Hyderabad-based company into the Corporate Insolvency Resolution Process under the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code.
{{/usCountry}}With Justice Sharma’s recusal, the appeal will now be placed before a new bench and will have to be reheard all over again.
Incidentally, this is not the first time that Justice Sharma has recused from a matter citing attempts by outsiders to influence proceedings. In November last year, as reported by HT, the judicial member had recused himself from a case after announcing in open court that his brother had approached him via text messages regarding the matter. He had reproduced the text, which sought advice on the case being heard by his bench, verbatim in his judicial order announcing his recusal.
At the time, Justice Sharma, a former judge of the Uttarakhand high court, detailed in the order that his brother had sent WhatsApp messages discussing the case and seeking advice. The text message read, in part: “Brother, what can be in this paper that I am sending, what is the possibility of it happening, please try to give proper advice. This is a matter of your own court… If I have caused any kind of trouble, then I apologize.”