Supreme Court relief to ex-NUJS VC; drops its direction to have sexual harassment case recorded in resume

The Supreme Court recently deleted a portion of its September 12 judgment that had mandated former National University of Juridical Sciences (NUJS) Vice Chancellor Nirmal Kanti Chakrabarti to record allegations of sexual harassment against him permanently in his resume..In that judgement, the Court had directed Chakrabarti to append a copy of the judgement permanently to his resume/professional records. A bench of Justices Pankaj Mithal and PB Varale had observed that while the case filed against him by a faculty member of NUJS under the Sexual Harassment of Women at Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 (POSH Act) could not be entertained on technical grounds, the wrongdoing should not be erased from the VC's professional record. “It is directed that this judgment shall be made part of the resume of respondent no.1 (the Vice Chancellor), compliance of which shall be strictly ensured by him personally,” the Court had said in that judgment.Aggrieved by this direction, Chakrabarti moved the Supreme Court again with an expunction application to have the judgement modified and the observation removed. The matter was heard by the same bench. .Senior Advocates Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Madhavi Divan, appearing for Chakrabarti, argued that the observation amounted to a “stigmatic punishment” imposed without any inquiry, evidence, or notice despite the Court having upheld the bar of limitation under the POSH Act.They argued that the sexual harassment complaint filed in December 2023 had been rejected by the Local Complaints Committee as time-barred, and that both the Calcutta High Court and the Supreme Court had confined their scrutiny to limitation alone. They stressed that directing Chakrabarti to carry a lifelong mark in his professional record without any adjudication of the allegations, caused grave prejudice to his reputation and violated principles of natural justice..The Bench did not examine the detailed objections on maintainability or the wider arguments but said that the remark could not survive once it was accepted that the case was never decided on merits. The Court explained that the line, though intended to place the incident before the public, was inappropriate when there had been no factual finding against the applicant.“The intention of the Court in adding the above sentence was only to apprise the public with regard to the incident which had taken place involving the applicant/respondent. But nonetheless, as there is no finding on merits against him, we consider it appropriate to delete the same,” the Bench said while allowing the expunction application. .Chakrabarti was represented by Senior Advocates Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Madhavi Divan along with advocates Satya Ranjan Swain, Vishnu Kant, Amit Bhandari, Ankush Kapoor, Kautilya Birat, Aandrita Deb, Rajnandini, and Vishwadeep Chandrakar. .Follow Bar and Bench channel on WhatsAppDownload the Bar and Bench Mobile app for instant access to the latest legal news.