On November 18, the Supreme Court took strong objection to the allegations in a petition that attributed motives to a division bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court in deciding a case and issued contempt notices to the lawyers involved in the Special Leave Petition—Advocate ML Sharma and Advocate-on-Record Deepak Goel.

Vijay Singh, Assistant Accountant in Municipal Counsel at Tikambarh, who signed the affidavit, was also served with a contempt notice by a bench of Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Abhay S. Oka.

However, the court refused to accept Sharma's immediate apology and also objected to Goel signing off on the petition.

Tikambarh, the Municipal Counsel, had filed a special leave petition with the court. The bench noted that the petition alleged that the High Court's division bench had "unduly favoured" one party and thus committed "judicial misconduct."

"We have a feeling that the goal is to embarrass the Court," the bench said. When the bench asked who wrote the petition, the arguing counsel (ML Sharma) said he did. Even if the petition was drafted by the arguing counsel, the bench ruled that the Advocate-on-Record is responsible for signing the petition as the filing counsel.

Case Title: Municipal Council Tikamgarh v. Matsya Udyog Sahkari Samiti and Ors

SLP(c) 18820/2022

Link: https://main.sci.gov.in/supremecourt/2022/30312/30312_2022_2_10_39796_Order_18-Nov-2022.pdf