The Supreme Court of India on Friday heavily criticised the presence of Sanjay Malhotra, current Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, on a Search-Cum-Selection Committee that rejected the candidature of Indian Revenue Service officer Captain Pramod Kumar Bajaj for the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT).
As per an Indian Express report, when, in September 2024, the Search-Cum-Selection Committee rejected Bajaj’s candidature, RBI Governor Malhota was a member of the Committee and the Revenue Secretary at the time. However, Governor Malhotra had earlier been a respondent in contempt proceedings initiated by Baja in relation to service disputes.
Setting aside the Search-Cum-Selection Committee’s decision rejecting Bajaj’s candidature, the Supreme Court said that “in the interest of fairness and to dispel any reasonable apprehension of bias, it would have been appropriate for ‘the Officer’ to have recused from the evaluation process on his own. His failure to do so fortifies the aspersion of bias”.
Order for fresh committee meeting
In its order, the Supreme Court directed the Department of Personnel and Training (DoPT) to initiate a fresh meeting of the Search-Cum-Selection Committee within four weeks to consider the candidature of Captain Pramod Kumar Bajaj for the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal.
The apex court ordered the department to ensure exclusion of ‘the Officer’ from the proceedings of Search-Cum-Selection Committee. The court also directed DoPT to communicate the outcome of the Committee’s proceedings with Bajaj within two weeks after the meeting.
Rs 5 lakh fine on Centre
The Supreme Court noted that despite issuing notice on Bajaj’s writ petition on December 2, 2025, the Centre did not file any counter-affidavit even after the judgment was reserved on January 15, 2026, and called it “rank procrastination”.
The Supreme Court bench of Justices Vikram Nath and Sandeep Mehta imposed a cost of Rs 5 lakh on the Centre for rank procrastination. “deliberate obstacles created by them in the path of the petitioner bordering to vendetta and as the allegations set out in the writ petition remain untraversed,” the Supreme Court pulled the Centre.
The Supreme Court said, “considering the fact that ‘the Officer’ now holds a sensitive position, we refrain from making any observations on his role in the entire sequence of events leading to the present litigation”.