Six High Court bar associations on Thursday met Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and urged him to revoke the Supreme Court Collegium’s recommendation for the transfer of Justice Yashwant Varma of the Delhi High Court, Bar and Bench reported.

The representatives of the bar associations also demanded that a criminal investigation be initiated against Varma. The heads of the bar associations of Allahabad, Lucknow, Madhya Pradesh (Jabalpur), Gujarat, Karnataka and Kerala met Khanna on Thursday.

Unaccounted cash was allegedly recovered at Varma’s official residence when emergency services responded to a fire there on March 14. The judge said he was in Bhopal at the time and claimed that the cash did not belong to him or his family.

Allahabad High Court Bar Association President Anil Tiwari said the chief justice assured them that their demands would be considered. “However, CJI did not promise anything,” Tiwari added, according to Bar and Bench.

On March 22, the Supreme Court released a report including a video and three photographs showing bundles of notes that were allegedly recovered from the judge’s home. The Supreme Court Collegium on March 24 recommended that Varma be repatriated to the Allahabad High Court, which is his parent High Court.

The redacted report showed that Delhi High Court Chief Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya had written to Varma on March 21, asking him to “account for the presence of money/cash” in a room located in his bungalow.

The next day, the Allahabad High Court Bar Association began an indefinite strike against the proposal. Tiwari said the Allahabad High Court was “being considered as a dumping ground”.

“[The] Supreme Court knows the condition of Allahabad HC...instead of resolving the defect, if you transfer further defective people here, the system will collapse,” he said on Tuesday.

Set criminal law in motion: Bar associations

In a memorandum released earlier on Thursday, the bar associations urged the chief justice to “set the criminal law in motion as is applicable to any government servant”.

They added: “According to the report of the Chief Justice of High Court of Delhi, somebody removed the articles [cash] from the premises on 15.3.2025 and had the criminal law been set in motion, the evidence would not have been destroyed. In these kinds of crimes, there would be involvement of others and non-registration…would adversely affect their prosecution.”

The bar associations called for judges of the higher judiciary to be held accountable in such instances. They asked the chief justice to “reassess the current in-house procedure approved by the Supreme Court in 1999 and Restatement of Values of Judicial Life as approved in 1997 followed by the Bangalore Principles [of judicial conduct] of 2002”.

The Restatement of Values of Judicial Life is a code of judicial ethics adopted by the Supreme Court of India in 1997 and serves as a guide for judges to ensure an independent and impartial judiciary.