Chandigarh, June 16
Chandigarh Judicial Academy, set up early this year for training of judicial officers of both Punjab and Haryana, has in its inaugural year been caught in a serious controversy over the purchase of books from a local bookseller for its library.
Some of the law books purchased in bulk include “Cattle Trespass Act of 1871”, “Partition Act”, and “Exhaustive Guide to Slum Areas”.
The academy has been on a buying spree, purchasing books worth several lakhs of rupees for its proposed library, allegedly either without the prior approval or
sanction of its executive board or beyond the financial powers of the board.
Investigations reveal that normal established practice of inviting tenders or quotations by specifying the titles, books; Acts were not followed in the purchase of books.
Intriguingly, while bulk supplies of books have come from one publisher, Mohindra Capital Publishers of Sector 17, Chandigarh, costing the academy several lakhs of
rupees.
For some of the titles, 50 to 120 copies each, have been purchased from Mohindra Capital Publishers in a questionable deal.
Some books have been purchased from Universal Book Depot. This bookseller was not that lucky. It got orders for just few law books for one copy each.
Chandigarh legal circles are abuzz with speculations about the academy’s controversial purchases. Advocates probably want the Chief Justice to order a probe into the bulk purchase of books.
The purchases have left many questions unanswered.
- Were the purchases cleared by the executive board?
- Who decided how many volumes of a book should be purchased?
- Were any quotations called for purchase of these books?
- What were the criteria followed for selection of books?
- Who approved the criteria?
- Who approved the commission the academy got from different publishers?
- Who sanctioned payments to be made to the suppliers?
- What is the limit of financial powers of the director and the executive board?
- Were these purchases within the financial powers of the director and the executive board?
- Was the list of books ever put up or approved by the chief justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court?
At present there are 62 young judicial officers from Punjab in the academy. Another batch of 64 judicial officers from Haryana is expected to join in November this year.
The administrative set up includes a seven-member executive board headed by director-general justice J.S. Narang with N.S. Saini, a retired additional sessions judge, as its director.
On the executive board of the academy are six sitting judges of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. They are: justice J.S. Khehr, justice Mehtab Singh Gill, justice K.S. Grewal, justice Rajive Bhalla, justice Ranjit Singh Randhawa and justice S.N. Aggarwal. These appointments are made by the Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
Normally, the routine administrative work is controlled by director N.S. Saini. But, in the present case, who placed the order and under whose permission is still not known.
The books purchased include 120 copies each of AIR (prevention and control of pollution), Apprentices Act, Bar Council of India Rules, Coffeposa Act, Carriers Act, Cattle Trespass Act, Contract Labour Act, Divorces Rules, Electricity Rules, Drugs and Cosmetics Act and the Registration Act besides several others.
Then there are several other books of which 50 or 60 copies have been purchased. These include Rights to Information Act, Special Marriages Act, Societies Registration Act, Trade Marks Act, Trusts Act, Indian Limitation Act and several others.
