|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
Allahabad High Court Judge Justice Yashwant Varma, who is in the eye of a story after burnt currency notes were discovered at his official residence following a blaze in March last year, has resigned.
Justice Varma submitted his resignation to President Draupadi Murmu. His letter dated April 9 said, “While I do not propose to burden your august office with the reasons which have constrained me to submit this missive, it is with deep anguish that I hereby tender my resignation from the office of Judge of the Hon’ble High Court of Judicature at Allahabad, with immediate effect. It has been an honour to serve in this office.”
On Friday, a committee appointed by the Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to look into the allegations against him was to begin hearing.
In a separate letter to the Committee, he also denied the charges and said he is withdrawing from its proceedings “with immediate effect”.
The committee was appointed in August last year under section 3 of the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968.
It originally comprised Supreme Court judge Justice Aravind Kumar, Madras High Court Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava, and Senior Advocate B.V. Acharya. But with Justice Shrivastava retiring in March 2026, the panel was reconstituted replacing Justice Shrivastava with Bombay High Court Chief Justice Shree Chandrashekhar.
Varma was caught in a controversy after reports that burnt remains of wads of currency notes were discovered in the outhouse of his official residence in Delhi – he was then a judge of the Delhi High Court then — by personnel of the fire department who had rushed to put out a blaze on the night intervening March 14 and 15, 2025.
As a storm brewed, the Supreme Court Collegium recommended his transfer to Allahabad.
On March 22, 2025, the then Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna also set up a three-member committee to investigate allegations against the judge. It comprised Justice Sheel Nagu (the then Chief Justice of the Punjab & Haryana High Court), Justice GS Sandhawalia (the then Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court) and Justice Anu Sivaraman, who is a Judge of the Karnataka High Court.
The in-house committee found veracity in the charges following with the then CJI sought Justice Varma’s resignation. He, however, refused to do so following which the CJI rewarded the report, along with the reply from the judge, to President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Justice Varma, who by then had been transferred to Allahabad, moved the Supreme Court questioning the constitutional validity of the in-house procedure.
On August 7, 2025, a two-judge bench of Justices Dipankar Datta and A G Masih dismissed it saying, “the CJI, as the leader of the judiciary, apart from his various other duties owes a duty to the people of the country to keep the justice delivery system pure, clean and unpolluted… it is unreasonable to even think that despite an incident of the present nature, the CJI would wait for Parliament to take action.”
As the procedure for removal of a sitting judge of the High Court or Supreme Court demands, motions to impeach him were then moved in the Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha.
The Lok Sabha Speaker admitted the motion and appointed a Committee on August 12, 2025.
Varma questioned this before the SC saying though the notices for his impeachment were given in the Lok Sabha as well as Rajya Sabha, the speaker set up the committee even before the Rajya Sabha chairman admitted it and without holding the joint consultation.
This too came to be dismissed by the SC which found no infirmity in the process.
