Justices Deepak Kumar Karki and Ananada Mohan Bhattarai have decided to quit the constitutional bench hearing the petitions related to the House dissolution.
The two senior justices have decided to quit the five-strong bench led by Chief Justice (CJ) Cholendra Shumsher Rana after Justices Tej Bahadur KC and Bam Kumar Shrestha refused to recuse themselves from the bench despite questions raised about them.
Lawyers pleading on behalf of the petitioners have been protesting against presence of Justices Bam Kumar Shrestha and Tej Bahadur KC in the constitutional bench hearing the petitions related to the House dissolution.
Shrestha was part of the joint bench also including Kumar Regmi that invalidated the unification of CPN on March 7 reinstating CPN-UML and CPN (Maoist Center) to the state before their unification while KC was part of the bench that refused to review that verdict.
Similarly, KC is the only justice out of the four in the five-strong constitutional bench, that reinstated the House after it was dissolved on December 20, 2020, to have been repeated in the bench by CJ Rana.
They have decided to quit the bench after KC and Shrestha refused to recuse themselves pointing that the justices need to be seen to be delivering justice through verdict and stating that justices should opt for recusal even if their impartiality is even under an iota of uspicion.
