By Our Reporter
Chief Justice Cholendra Shumsher JBR retired from his job in a suspended condition on Wednesday. This could be a rare case in Nepal’s judiciary, in which a Chief Justice was denied justice for 10 months.
The parliament that registered the impeachment motion against CJ Rana did not think it necessary to proceed ahead with the motion. It just suspended the Chief Justice without holding any discussion on the motion for 10 months. Of course, the parties in the ruling coalition had registered the impeachment motion just to prevent him from carrying out his duty as the Chief Justice. Even the SC itself did an injustice to him by preventing him from resuming office just days before he was to retire by scrapping the decision of the Parliamentary Secretary that the impeachment motion registered against CJ Rana became void with the expiry of the first House of Representatives.
Rana resumed the office of Chief Justice on January 2, 2019. However, he was suspended on February 13, 2022, after he faced an impeachment motion accusing him of failing to discharge his official responsibilities.
Following this, he on December 6 pleaded by filing an application at the Parliament Secretariat seeking that the impeachment motion registered against him became void with the expiry of the tenure of the House of Representatives in which the impeachment motion was registered.
As per his demand, the Parliament Secretariat on December 7 sent a letter to the Supreme Court citing that the impeachment motion against him was ineffective.
However, a writ petition was filed in the Supreme Court against the letter. Following this, the apex court on Friday issued an interim order asking for not implementing the letter. And this prevented him from resuming office even for a day before his retirement.
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