2 more weeks to issue judges’ conduct rule gazette

The Appellate Division of the Supreme Court has yet again extended the deadline to issue a gazette notification on disciplinary and conduct rules for lower court judges. An eight-member bench of the apex court, headed by Chief Justice Surendra Kumar Sinha, passed the order extending the deadline by another two weeks on Tuesday in response to the attorney general’s time petition. However, before the order, the Chief Justice expressed his dissatisfaction over the government praying time repeatedly in this regard. He said that by the judiciary has been held hostage by the procrastination in issuance of the gazette. The bench while delivering the order said that the matter relating to the gazette issuance should be dealt with as smoothly as the government is running the country. “Isn’t the government in operation?…. Isn’t there is a government? How is it operating?….The country is not stuck, right?” it asked Attorney General Mahbubey Alam. On December 12 last year, the court had asked the authorities concerned to issue the gazette  by January 15, but the date was deferred till February 5. The next hearing date was February 27. Earlier, President Abdul Hamid had decided not to issue the gazette despite a court ordering the government to do so. Then the bench had said that the president might have been misinformed. A historic Appellate Division verdict on the Masdar Hossain case mandated drafting a 12-point guideline on the separation of the judiciary from the executive. The government had drafted the rules and sent it to the apex court for its opinion, which made some changes and sent it back for the gazette issuance. So far, the court has issued multiple orders asking the government to issue the gazette but in vain.