Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi (SP)

Bangalore / New Delhi, Oct 12: Reportedly, the collegium of the Supreme Court headed by the Chief Justice K G Balakrishnan, has decided to put on hold, the decision to promote P D Dinakaran, Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court, to the post of the Supreme Court judge. Reliable sources said that the collegium, which met here on Saturday October 10, has asked Dinakaran to explain about the allegation that he has huge land holdings in Piruvallur district of Tamil Nadu.

The collegium arrived at this decision, after verifying a report received from the district collector of Pirivallur taluk. The report had said that Dinakaran holds 500 acres of land in Kaverirajapuram of Tituttani taluk alone. The above decision was decided to conveyed to the law ministry, where the files pertaining to the promotion of five High Court Chief Justices are pending.

The other Chief Justices, A K Patnaik (Madhya Pradesh), T S Thakur (Punjab and Haryana), S S Nijjar (Kolkatta) and K S Radhakrishnan (Gujarat) are likely to get promoted shortly.

In the meantime, it is said that the revenue officials engaged with assessing the details of the property held by Dinakaran were threatened by the Chief Justice. As the Chief Justice is facing the allegation of annexing 197 acres of government land lying adjacent to his property by erecting fences, he reportedly tried to remove the fence on Saturday. Both Tituttani tahsildar and revenue divisional officer have complained to the district collector, that they had received a call over mobile phone from a person who identified himself as Dinakaran, who threatened that they will face criminal cases if they enter the property in question. The officials said that efforts to remove the fence were made to prove the earlier report of the district commissioner about the annexing of government property as false.