The main legal point established in the judgment is that the bail orders proceeded on irrelevant considerations and therefore deserved to be cancelled. The court found that the assumption of the fact that the accused were not government servants was incorrect and against record, and the bail had been granted heavily relying on such parity being extended to those who were not government servants. The consideration therefore was irrelevant and clearly tended towards perversity.

Amreshwar Pratap Sahi,J.

The history of this unusual determination with relevant facts and details have been extensively narrated in a prelude, that took shape of an order by a division bench on 16.1.2014, upon a reference being made in a recall application by a bench presided over by Hon'ble the Chief Justice vide order dated 13.12.2013. It is, therefore, unnecessary to sketch the background, which can be easily retrieved from the division bench order dated 16.1.2014 and also the orders passed by this Court on 1.4.2014 on the two correction applications.

2. The larger question of upholding the Majesty of Law while abiding by the Rule of Law is basically the concern of this court while delivering this order, coupled of course with some fundamental questions of authority and jurisdiction giving rise to this case.

3. These three bail cancellation applications have been filed praying for cancelling the bail granted to the accused Dinesh Kumar Singh and Ram Prasad Jaiswal respectively in cases arising out of the NRHM scam. It is to be noted that the accused had been granted bail by a learned Single Judge of this Court on 5.12.2013 by a common order in which the accused had filed two correction applications. The learned Judge passed orders on the same. Before the orders could be actually executed a recall application was filed by the C.B.I. for recalling the orders passed on the correction application dated 11.12.2013. When this fact was brought to the knowledge of Hon'ble the Chief Justice then a Bench presided over by Hon'ble the Chief Justice on 13.12.2013 passed orders suspending the execution of the bail orders as well the orders on the correction application and directed the hearing of the recall application by a Bench as nominated by Hon'ble the Chief Justice. The recall application was heard by a Division Bench on 16.1.2014 and it was allowed. As a consequence whereof the orders passed on the correction applications on 11.12.2013 were recalled and the correction applications were directed to be heard by the appropriate Bench. Hon'ble the Chief Justice thereafter was pleased to nominate this Bench to hear the correction applications on which orders were passed on 1.4.2013.

4. It was noticed by this Court that bail cancellation applications had already been filed by the CBI and, therefore, the correction applications should be heard along with these bail cancellation applications. Consequently, since all these matters have been nominated to this Bench by Hon'ble the Chief Justice, learned counsel for the C.B.I. and for the accused have been heard at length. The accused have filed a response to the bail cancellation applications which is on record.

5. Sri Anurag Khanna, learned counsel for the C.B.I., has urged that a common ground in all the three applications is that the bail has been granted to the accused on irrelevant considerations but in Bail Cancellation Applications No.216 and 217 it has been urged that there is an additional ground of want of jurisdiction by the learned Judge to have granted bail. He submits that, as a matter of fact, only Bail Application No.4314 of 2013 was nominated to the learned Single Judge by Hon'ble the Chief Justice whereas she proceeded to grant bail in the other two applications no. 4310 and 8237 of 2013 as well which had not been nominated to her. Sri Khanna has invited the attention of the Court to the observations made by the Division Bench in the judgment dated 16.1.2014 as also in the orders passed by this Court on the correction applications dated 1.4.2014 to that effect. He submits that since jurisdiction goes to the root of the matter, and since the learned Judge had no authority under the roster assigned to her, the orders in the other two bail applications, namely, Bail Application No.8237 of 2013 and 4310 of 2013, deserve to be cancelled. For this he has placed reliance on two judgments of the Apex Court in the cases of Balwant N. Viswamitra and others Vs. Yadav Sadashiv Mule