Facing criticism on the controversy surrounding former minister A Raja allegedly attempting to influence a Madras high court judge, former CJI K G Balakrishnan on Wednesday insisted that the minister's name was not mentioned by Justice H L Gokhale in his report.

Balakrishnan issued a statement on Wednesday saying there was no question of suppressing the report of the then chief justice of the Madras high court (Gokhale). The sitting supreme court judge Gokhale had contradicted him yesterday.

The former CJI, however, did not refer to the letter written by Justice R Reghupathi, who was approached by a lawyer taking the name of Raja for securing bail to an accused in a criminal case, to Gokhale in which he had taken Raja's name.

The controversy refused to die with Gokhale issuing a statement flatly contradicting Balakrishnan's claim at a press conference last week that his letter did not name Raja.

Gokhale pointed out that Reghupathi's letter was already with the CJI and in the second para of that letter, the judge had specifically mentioned Raja's name.

Gokhale refused to comment on Balakrishnan's statement on Wednesday. "I have already made my statement," he said.

Balakrishnan said from news reports it appears that an attempt was being made to creat a wedge between high institutions of judiciary and attach motives over the allegations of a union minister having spoken to a judge to influence his judicial function, which is unfortunate.

"I am issuing this statement only with the hope that the facts will not be twisted and henceforth no motives will be attached to the judiciary," he said.

Referring to Gokhale's statement issued yesterday, Balakrishnan contended that he had not said that the judge had sent an incorrect or false report to him regarding the alleged incident or suppressed any facts.

"I only stated that in the report given to me, no mention was made of any minister having spoken to the judge of the Madras high court. In the report also no name of any minister was mentioned," the former CJI said.

Balakrishnan said from the media reports subsequent to the press release by Gokhale, "it appears that I suppressed certain facts to save somebody. I never wanted to publish any confidential letter received by me in my capacity as chief justice of India."

But, he said, since the contents of the letter written between him and Gokhale have been already made public, he was constrained to quote from his personal file the full text of the August 8, 2009 report sent by Gokhale as chief justice of Madras high court to him as CJI.

Balakrishnan maintained that he did not receive any letter from Reghupathi and he could go only on the basis of a conclusive report of the chief justice of a high court.

"And in this issue, as per the report of the chief justice of the Madras high court, there was no cogent ground made out for a case against any union minister," he said.

The former CJI maintained that he would reiterate that in any case if the judge concerned felt that anybody, be it a union minister, tried to influence his judicial function, he could have proceeded against him without seeking any direction from the CJI or the high court chief justice.

"All these matters were brought to the notice of the union law minister on August 18, 2009 in response to his letter to me drawing reference to the memorandum submitted to the prime minister by the MPs of different political parties.

"There was no question of suppressing the report of the chief justice of Madras high court," he said.