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Deepak Raj Joshee resigns as Supreme Court justice
After staying on a leave for about a month and a half, Deepak Raj Joshee resigned as a Supreme Court justice on Tuesday. He was the senior most justice at the apex court.Tika R Pradhan
After staying on a leave for about a month and a half, Deepak Raj Joshee resigned as a Supreme Court justice on Tuesday. He was the senior most justice at the apex court.
Joshee sent his resignation to President Bidya Devi Bhandari through Chief Justice Rana.
“The President has accepted Joshee’s resignation,” Joint-secretary Chhabindra Parajuli, a spokesperson for the Office of the President, confirmed to the Post.
On August 3, 2018, the Parliamentary Hearing Committee had rejected Joshee’s nomination as the chief justice.
Joshee, who was serving as the acting chief justice at the time, was nominated for the top judiciary job by the Constitutional Council on June 12, 2018. He was to replace Gopal Prasad Parajuli.
However, Joshee’s nomination was rejected by the hearing committee for failing to give satisfactory answers to lawmakers’ questions about his academic credentials, controversial hearings and capability to lead the judiciary.
Joshee is the first person to have been rejected by the parliamentary hearing committee.
In a rare practice in the history of Nepal’s judiciary, Joshee had worked under his junior colleague Om Prakash Mishra, who was appointed the chief justice after Joshee’s nomination was rejected by the hearing committee.
When Cholendra Shumsher Rana succeeded Mishra as the chief justice on January 2, he stripped Joshee of all his duties as the senior-most justice.
During his hearing at the hearing committee, Rana had vowed not to assign any responsibility to Joshee.
Chief Justice Rana also removed Joshee from the Mediation Council and the constitutional bench.
“Chief Justice Rana had been asking me to resign since he joined office. I felt humiliated after I was stripped of my duties. So I resigned,” Joshee told the Post on Tuesday.