The Seventeenth Recusal: When Stepping Aside Becomes a Way of Not Deciding

The Moment of Decision

Imagine you are the tribunal member. The petitioner is a forest officer with a long record of exposing wrongdoing and a longer record of litigation over his own career. He is arguing in person. You have told him several times to keep to the point and he keeps drifting.

You also know that sixteen judges and tribunal members before you have stepped away from his cases. You could recuse yourself too. The easy answer would be that recusal is always the safe choice, but that is not true here.

What Each Choice Costs

If you recuse:

• You protect yourself from any later claim that your irritation became bias.
• But the officer's grievance about his appraisal goes back to the Registry, waits for another Bench and loses more time.
• And you add to a pattern that, after 17 recusals in 13 years, begins to look less like caution and more like an institution that will not decide his cases.

If you stay:

• You keep a forum open for a public servant whose complaint may be real.
• But you carry the risk that a frustrated hearing leads to an accusation of prejudice and the appearance of impartiality may be harder to maintain. Both choices cost something to someone real.

The Framework, Applied

The common law rule that justice must not only be done but be seen to be done explains why recusal exists. A judge with a personal interest or prior involvement should not sit. But a companion principle, often called the duty to sit, holds that a judge must hear what is assigned unless there is a genuine reason not to.

A difficult litigant is not such a reason. Kant's test helps here: if every judge stepped aside whenever a petitioner was difficult, the rule, applied universally, would leave difficult petitioners with no court at all. That cannot be a sound rule.

The tribunal's own record matters too. The order noted, fairly, that Chaturvedi's submissions strayed from the issue despite repeated directions. That is a problem of courtroom management. It is not evidence of a conflict of interest.

The Resolution **Stay on the

case. Manage the hearing firmly instead of leaving it. Confine arguments to the APAR issue, set time limits, ask for written submissions and record every direction in the order. Recuse only if there is a genuine ground, such as a personal connection or prior involvement and then record that reason**.

An unexplained recusal protects one judge's reputation. A stated one protects the institution's. What this choice sacrifices is real. The judge accepts a harder, longer hearing and the possibility of being accused of bias by a litigant who may lose.

But an officer who reports wrongdoing and then cannot get his own service disputes decided has lost more than a hearing. Every honest officer watching learns what raising a complaint may cost.