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Supreme Court ire forces govt to seek adjournment in Bezbaruah case

Faced with the Supreme Court's ire in the controversial transfer of M K Bezbaruah from the Enforcement Directorate to the Delhi government as transport commissioner, the Union government today sought adjournment of the hearing till tomorrow.

The adjournment was sought by Solicitor General Santosh Hegde as he wanted to obtain the government's instructions to reply to the charge that the transfer was ''politically motivated.''

During the day-long hearing, a three-judge bench comprising Justices S P Bharucha, G T Nanavati and B N Kirpal expressed its utter dissatisfaction with the government affidavit justifying the transfer.

The transfer issue was raised by amicus curiae Anil Divan in the Indian Bank scam case allegedly involving top politicians and industrialists facing charges of foreign exchange violations.

The court observed that the directions given in the Jain hawala case relating to the appointments of heads of the investingating agencies had not been properly quoted in the affidavit with several words in the judgment missing.

''The relevant words of the judgement are omitted. How can you do so? If this is not an attempt to mislead the court then what it is? The sentence in the judgment is completely re-written and that too by the government,'' the judges observed.

When the solicitor general admitted that it was an error, the judges observed, ''It is a tremendous error. It goes on to show with what diligence the affidavit was prepared in such an important matter.''

Referring to the Jain hawala judgment and the N N Vohra committee report, the judges said that all these reports were unanimous that the persons in sensitive offices should have the security of tenure.

Strongly pleading for the revocation of the transfer order of Bezbaruah, Divan submitted that a strong signal should go to bring to an end this kind of arbitrary transfers to prevent demoralisation among the honest officers.

UNI

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