Suspended DRT presiding officer moves SC, questions Delhi HC order on suspension

MM Dhonchak, Presiding Officer of the Debt Recovery Tribunal-2 (DRT), Chandigarh, has moved the Supreme Court assailing a Delhi High Court Division Bench judgment dated July 1 in LPA No. 204 of 2025 (MM Dhonchak v Union of India). A judicial officer with over 35 years of service, including tenure as Principal District and Sessions Judge, Gurugram, Dhonchak has termed his suspension arbitrary and stigmatic, alleging bias, violation of natural justice and systemic ramifications for judicial independence.

He has sought quashing of the November 5, 2024, order extending his suspension, or in the alternative, a direction to the high court to decide his appeal afresh through a speaking judgment considering all submissions.

Dhonchak contends that despite filing detailed written arguments on April 15 and May 6, 2025 — running into 11 pages — the Division Bench failed to notice or address them. He had expressly waived oral hearing in favour of written submissions, but the judgment, he says, proceeded as if no such arguments existed. The omission, he argues, violates settled principles of natural justice.

A core ground raised is bias: The Chairperson of the Search-cum-Selection Committee that dealt with his matter was also among the judges who earlier made adverse observations against him in a related SLP. This conflict, he claims, was brushed aside in para 44 of the impugned judgment with the non-speaking conclusion, “we do not find any merit.”

Challenging the continuation of suspension, Dhonchak stresses no allegation of dishonesty or lack of integrity exists against him. On the contrary, he had the highest disposal rate among 39 DRTs nationwide — 348 cases a month, more than the combined total of seven other tribunals. Yet his suspension, allegedly under pressure from “unruly Bar members,” has effectively shut down DRT-2, leaving 20,000 litigants in 10,000 cases stranded and causing loss to the exchequer.

Charges against him, he maintains, are vague: one alleging delay in disposals despite his statistics, and another alleging rudeness to advocates without citing any name, incident or evidence.

He points out that the high court incorrectly recorded that he did not press his appeal grounds. In para 39, the Bench left functioning of DRT-2 during suspension to the competent authority, despite no substitute Presiding Officer being available. Para 42, he asserts, admitted that dismissal of his intervention in an SLP “might have” influenced the authority to extend suspension — thereby resting on irrelevant considerations.

Calling his case a “dangerous precedent,” Dhonchak warns that if left unchecked, the judgment conveys that honest and fearless judges who resist Bar pressure may face humiliation through suspension, imperilling judicial independence.

Among the key questions framed in his SLP are whether written arguments must mandatorily be considered; whether bias claims can be dismissed without a reasoned order; whether suspension can be repeatedly extended on the same grounds; and whether “once suspended, always suspended” has any basis in law.