The Supreme Court has rejected the petition of a lawyer demanding a fee of Rs 1 crore from the Central Government. The court described the lawyer’s demand as based on a wrong assumption. Advocate Ashok Pandey claimed that he had filed petitions in support of the then Chief Justice Deepak Mishra in 2017-18. The court said that if he did something considering it as a social service, then his fees cannot be collected from the government.
Ashok Pandey claimed that the purpose of his petitions was to save the post of Chief Justice from disgrace. He had filed these petitions at a time when the opposition parties were trying to bring an impeachment motion against the then Chief Justice Deepak Mishra in the Rajya Sabha. The lawyer said that what he did should have been done by the Attorney General or Solicitor General of the Central Government.
In March last year, the Lucknow bench of Allahabad High Court had also rejected Pandey’s petition. The High Court had said that the government has an authorized panel of lawyers to represent its interests in the Supreme Court. Neither was Pandey a part of that panel, nor had the Law Ministry asked Pandey to file these cases, so there is no legal basis for demanding fees from the government.
Before filing the petition in the High Court, Pandey had written a letter to the President’s Office demanding the fees. The President’s Office had sent this letter to the Ministry. The Union Law Ministry rejected his claim on July 26, 2024, saying that he had filed the petitions of his own free will. The government had not made any request to him to do so.
At the very beginning of the hearing held on Thursday, March 12, the bench of Chief Justice Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi and Justice Vipul M Pancholi made it clear that it does not consider the petition worthy of hearing. Despite this, Ashok Pandey continued arguing for a long time. He even said that when he filed these petitions in the Supreme Court, he did not have money. He had filed the petitions by borrowing two lakh rupees from his daughter. Ultimately the judges’ patience ran out. The Chief Justice said, ‘Enough is enough.’ Your petition is being rejected.
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