Justice Ranjit V More

After serving as a judge in the Bombay High Court for over 13 years, the Supreme Court Collegium, through a statement issued on February 12, recommended the transfer of Justice Ranjit V More to the Meghalaya High Court.

Justice More was elevated as an Additional Judge in the Bombay High Court in September 2006. Born in 1959, Justice More went on to obtain his LLB degree from Shivaji University, following which he pursued his LLM in Mumbai University.

He enrolled as an advocate in September 1983, and joined the chambers of now-retired A P Shah, who went on to become the Chief Justice of the High Courts of Madras and Delhi. Justice More’s areas of practice covered civil, criminal and Constitutional matters.

Last month, a bench led by Justice More passed an order directing Rakesh and Sarang Wadhawan, promoters of HDIL, to be moved from Arthur Road Jail to their Bandra residence to ensure cooperation with an HC-appointed committee for disposal of HDIL assets on priority. Justice More passed the order in a PIL seeking public auction of HDIL assets mortgaged with crisis-hit PMC Bank. However, the SC stayed the order of moving the Wadhawans out of jail.

Earlier, in October 2019, a bench led by Justice More granted interim relief to IL&FS’s former auditors Deloitte Haskins and BSR & Associates (KPMG arm) and prevented the government from taking coercive action against them in criminal proceedings. The HC also stayed proceedings to ban the auditors for five years for alleged connivance in the IL&FS scam.

The same month, Justice More held that illegal tapping of phone calls violates privacy rights and held that interception of calls is permitted only in case of public emergency and safety.

On September 13 last year, he turned down a plea by Gautam Navlakha, accused in the Elgaar Parishad case, seeking to quash the FIR filed against him by Pune police. A bench of Justice More and Justice Bharati Dangre, in June last year, upheld the Maharashtra government’s decision to provide reservation to the Maratha community under the Socially and Educationally Backward Classes (SEBC) Act, 2018. The court, however, reduced the 16 per cent quota granted by the state in education and government jobs to 12 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively.

In December 2017, a bench of Justice More and Justice Sadhana Jadhav granted relief to former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan and set aside then Governor Vidyasagar