Senior Bombay HC judge S C Dharmadhikari resigns, cites personal reasons

MUMBAI: Justice S C Dharmadhikari, senior most judge of Bombay high court has resigned with effect from February 15. He told the media that his resignation was for “purely personal’’ reasons and that for his family he wanted to be in the state of Maharashtra.
He is the second senior HC judge to have resigned in recent years, the last being Chief Justice V K Tahilramani of Madras high court who resigned on September 6, 2019.She had resigned after the Supreme Court collegium declined her request for reconsideration of a transfer to Meghalaya as its CJ.
Justice Dharmadhikari was being considered for elevation as Chief Justice of another high court since last October. He is reliably learnt to have turned out the elevation option for Madhya Pradesh HC for personal reasons.
Justice Dharmadhikari was born on 26 January, 1960 in a family of lawyers. He first did his BCom and then studied Law. Advocate since 1983, he was appointed Judge of Bombay HC in 2003. His father was late Justice C S Dharmadhikari.
His resignation took lawyers by surprise on Friday. He sat on his regular bench with Justice Riyaz Chagla and rose before lunch. It was his last sitting and he mentioned it to the lawyers too.
In his long tenure, one which he said he found “very satisfying”, he passed numerous significant judgments. He said the “dependency on Judiciary” was on the rise as “people had stopped asking questions” and with “government as one of the biggest litigants” there were “many challenges before the Judiciary”.
He said “when you go to another state, it takes time to get familiar with the working culture and its people there” and mentioned that there was a lot of administrative work also to be done as a Judge.
Had his father been alive, he said, he would have stood by whatever decision he (Justice Dharmadhikari) made but he may have also said, “Go, don’t worry”.