Two drafts of their order stun HC judges

Ahmedabad: Justices in a division bench of Gujarat high court were flabbergasted at seeing two different drafts of an order placed before them on Tuesday afternoon.
The stenographer placed two orders, mentioning two dates when the case was to be heard in future, before the division bench of Justice K S Jhaveri and Justice G B Shah for their signatures.This irked the judges and Justice Jhaveri took to task advocate Ekant Ahuja, who is involved in the case, and a stenographer Ashish Ghadiya.
Justice Jhaveri warned the lawyer and stenographer of contempt of court proceedings against them. He also warned the court staff that he might lose his job in a minute. The judge came down heavily on the lawyer too for trying to be “super judge“ by instructing the stenographer on his own to change adjournment date.
Sources said that the court in the morning adjourned a case of 1995, but the lawyer was not comfortable with the next date of hearing.He approached the stenographer and requested him to put in a convenient date on condition that he would mention it before the bench in the afternoon. Accordingly , the stenographer made two drafts of the order with two different dates.
When the judges found two drafts, they got angry . It was only after the advocate general intervened in the case, that the judges spared the lawyer who had already tendered unconditional apology .Later, the issue was put to rest after it was submitted that there was no malafide intended either on part of the court staff or the lawyer, because two drafts were prepared so that judges could put their signature on one of them and finalize it, sources said.