High Court judges must adhere to jurisdiction assigned by Chief Justice: Supreme Court

The Supreme Court recently reaffirmed the High Court Chief Justice's authority in assigning cases among High Court judges and emphasized the need for High Court judges to operate within their designated jurisdiction [Neeta Singh and Others v. State of Uttar Pradesh]..The Bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and Prashant Kumar Mishra explained that High Court judges cannot convert nomenclature of the petitions before them without Chief Justice's approval if the converted petition does not fall within their assigned jurisdiction. .The Court made the observation in a case where the Allahabad High Court had dismissed a writ petition filed under Article 226 of the Constitution of India to quash a First Information Report (FIR) in a criminal case. Pertinently, this writ petition was dismissed by the High Court as infructuous since a chargesheet had been filed and a trial court had taken cognisance of the charges by the time the petition was taken up for hearing. The petitioners' counsel argued that the High Court could have moulded the relief and converted the petition to one under Article 227 (supervisory jurisdiction of High Court over all courts in an area) to hear the matter on merits, instead of merely dismissing the Article 226 petition as infructuous. The Supreme Court, however, disagreed. "A Judge of a high court having been assigned petitions under Article 226 for hearing and decision by its Chief Justice cannot, if he (the Judge) finds that the petition filed under Article 226 should have ideally been filed under Article 227, treat the petition as one under Article 227 and proceed to hear and decide it, unless the Chief Justice has also assigned to such Judge petitions under Article 227 of the Constitution for hearing and decision. If not so assigned, the learned Judge may, in his discretion, direct the petition to be treated as one under Article 227 for being placed before the learned Judge having assignment," the Court observed in its October 15 judgment..Before the High Court, certain persons booked under Sections 406, 504 and 506 of the Indian Penal Code, 1860 had filed a writ petition to quash the FIR. The High Court was of the view that since the charge-sheet had been filed and since a trial court had taken cognisance of the charges, the writ petition had been rendered infructuous..The accused challenged this decision before the Supreme Court. Their counsel, Senior Advocate S Nagamuthu argued that the High Court still had the discretion to quash the FIR. The Supreme Court, however, was not persuaded that the High Court has to exercise such discretion in all such cases."If during the pendency of a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution before a high court where an FIR is challenged the investigation is completed and chargesheet filed, in pursuance whereof the competent criminal court takes cognizance of the offence, the court would be disabled in proceeding with the writ petition owing to a judicial order having intervened ... If a judicial order passed by a civil court cannot be challenged in a writ petition under Article 226 of the Constitution, a fortiori, a judicial order passed by a criminal court cannot also be challenged in a writ petition under Article 226," the Court said. .As an alternative argument, senior advocate Nagamuthu submitted that the High Court could have converted the Article 226 petition to either a petition under Article 227 or one under Section 482 of Criminal Procedure Code, 1973. He contended that the nomenclature of the plea was of no relevance and that the High Court still had powers to examine if some relief could be granted after converting the petition's nomenclature. However, the top court relied on the ruling in State of Rajasthan vs. Prakash Chand (1998) to observe that the nomenclature of a petition does matter. A High Court judge cannot decide on a case unless the jurisdiction to do so has been allocated to such a judge by the High Court Chief Justice, the Court said. In this case, the Supreme Court found that there was nothing to indicate that the High Court Bench was allocated the jurisdiction to hear Article 227 petitions as well. The top court, therefore, concluded that there was nothing wrong in the High Court's decision and dismissed the appeal. .Advocates Samant Singh, Shreyas Kaushal, Rajeev Singh, also appeared for accused..[Read Judgment]