Impeachment notice against CJI: Land-grab among 5 opposition allegations

NEW DELHI: One of the charges the Opposition has made in the impeachment notice against Chief Justice Dipak Misra is about land acquired when he was an advocate “by giving an affidavit which was found to be false.

Despite orders of the ADM cancelling the allotment in 1985, he surrendered the land only in 2012, when he was elevated to the Supreme Court.” ET was first to report about the allegation against Justice Misra. ET’s December 2, 2016, edition reported that Justice BP Das of Orissa High Court had ordered a CBI inquiry into the land acquisition deal, details of which are as follows:

On November 30, 1979, two acres in Cuttack was allotted to advocate Misra but the allocation was cancelled by an additional district magistrate in 1985, who ordered the land records to be corrected. In 2016, Justice BP Das alleged that his candidacy as chief justice of the Punjab & Haryana High Court ‘may have been scuttled’ because he ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation to probe a controversial allotment of public land.


“In January, I ordered a CBI probe and three months later, in March 2012, my name came up for appointment as the Chief Justice of Punjab & Haryana High Court. I heard that my name was opposed by Justice Dipak Misra, but I don’t have any record with me. Well, but for this, I would have retired as chief justice,” Justice Das told ET.