New Delhi: On Thursday (May 14), Delhi high court Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma did two things that appear, at first, to be in tension. She initiated criminal contempt proceedings against former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and his five Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) colleagues. The conduct, she held, amounted to an orchestrated social-media campaign against her. She then transferred the excise policy revision to another bench. Kejriwal and Manish Sisodia are accused in that case.Just three weeks earlier, on April 20, the same judge had refused, in a 115-page order, to step away from the same case. Kejriwal himself had asked her to. What changed? And how can both decisions sit alongside each other?The answer is that recusal and contempt answer two different questions. Once that is clear, the paradox dissolves. What remains is a sharper question: was the route the judge took the only one open to her?What is recusal, and why did she refuse it in April?Recusal is a judge’s withdrawal from a case because her continued participation might appear improper. The test, settled by the Supreme Court across decades, is whether a reasonable, informed observer would entertain a real likelihood of bias. The standard is objective. A judge cannot recuse on every complaint, because that would surrender the bench to litigants who shop for sympathetic courts.Kejriwal, Sisodia, Durgesh Pathak, Vijay Nair, Arun Pillai and Chanpreet Singh Rayat had sought Justice Sharma’s recusal on three grounds. First, that her March 9 order had recorded prima facie that the trial court’s discharge order was “erroneous”. That observation, they argued, had been made after a short hearing in which the accused had no opportunity to respond. Second, that her children were empanelled as Union government counsel and received work routed through Solicitor General Tushar Mehta. Mehta appears for the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in the excise case. Third, that she had attended four programmes between 2022 and 2025 of the Akhil Bharatiya Adhivakta Parishad, the legal affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS).Justice Sharma rejected all three. A prima facie view on a stay application, she held, is not a final view. Her children were among 600 to 700 empanelled lawyers, not a chosen few. Her appearances at the Adhivakta Parishad, she said, were professional engagements with the bar, not ideological declarations. To recuse on these grounds, she added, would invite bench-hunting by every disaffected litigant.That order, in form and substance, fell well within the orthodox jurisprudence on recusal.What is contempt of court, and what did Thursday’s order do?Contempt of court is a separate doctrine. The Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 recognises two kinds. Civil contempt is wilful disobedience of a court order. Criminal contempt, under Section 2(c) of the Act, covers three things: scandalising the court, prejudicing a judicial proceeding, and obstructing the administration of justice. Today’s order falls under the first of these, scandalising the court.Justice Sharma held that the conduct outside her court, after her April 20 ruling, was not fair criticism but a campaign. She then named the specific imputations she found contemptuous. The cumulative effect, she ruled, was a coordinated campaign that crossed from criticism into scandalising the court. If such accusations were allowed to circulate, she said, the result would be anarchy.Why does initiating contempt force her off the main case, when refusing recusal did not?Here lies the distinction the lay reader needs.A recusal application asks the court a question about the judge: is her continued presence on the bench compatible with the appearance of impartiality? Justice Sharma answered no in April. The test, she held, was not satisfied.A contempt proceeding asks a question about the litigant: has their conduct, outside the courtroom, crossed from criticism into scandalising the court? The moment a judge concludes that a particular litigant may be liable in contempt, her relationship with that litigant has changed. She is now both an adjudicator of their civil cause and a complainant in their criminal contempt. To continue hearing the substantive case would convert a procedural rule of separation into an optical impossibility. No reasonable observer would believe her view of the merits was untouched by a parallel finding of intimidation.This is why Justice Sharma told the court on Thursday, citing settled judicial practice, that “a judge who draws contempt cannot hear the main case”. It was not a change of mind about the April recusal order. It was the operation of a different rule, triggered by a fact that did not exist in April: namely, her own decision to draw contempt.Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and additional solicitor general S.V. Raju urged her to retain the excise revision and have only the contempt heard elsewhere. She declined. The litigant, she said, would otherwise have a fresh grievance every time she ruled against him.What happens next?The CBI’s revision against the Rouse Avenue court’s February 27 discharge of all 23 accused, including Kejriwal, Sisodia and former Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS) leader K. Kavitha, now goes to another judge. The Chief Justice of the Delhi high court will decide the assignment. That bench will hear the agency’s challenge afresh.The contempt notices remain before Justice Sharma. The respondents will be called to show cause why they should not be punished for criminal contempt. The Contempt of Courts Act prescribes simple imprisonment up to six months, a fine up to two thousand rupees, or both. The judge has also indicated that a separate contempt strand may follow against YouTubers who circulated an edited clip of Justice Sharma speaking at the University of Varanasi , which she alleges aggravated the contempt.But can the same judge hear the contempt against statements aimed at her?This is the sharper question, and it sits awkwardly within the law.The foundational principle of natural justice is nemo judex in causa sua: no one should be a judge in her own cause. Justice Sharma is, in one sense, a judge in her own cause. The contempt arises from imputations against her personally, against her children, and against the bench she presides over. She is at once the complainant, the witness to the affront, and the adjudicator.The countervailing principle, equally settled, is that contempt of court is not a remedy for an injured judge. It is a protection for the public’s confidence in the administration of justice. The judge is a vehicle for that protection, not its beneficiary. On that reasoning, the Supreme Court has across decades heard contempt of itself. In C.K. Daphtary v. O.P. Gupta (1971), the contempt was heard by a bench from which the criticised judge had since retired. In Prashant Bhushan (2020), a bench of three judges decided contempt for tweets criticising the serving Chief Justice.The practice is therefore on the side of Justice Sharma. The principle, less so. Senior members of the bar, including the late Fali Nariman and retired Justice Markandey Katju, have urged a stricter rule. Where the imputation is personal, they argue, the judge most directly affected ought to step away and allow another judge to decide. The argument is not that no judge can hear contempt of the judiciary. It is that the judge whose personality has been attacked is poorly placed to assess where fair comment ends and scandalising begins.Justice Sharma’s position is that she has decided to take the affront on behalf of the institution rather than herself. Yet she also recorded that her children were dragged in, that the campaign was a calculated humiliation, that videos were edited with intent. These are observations of a witness, not findings of fact ascertainable from a cold record. They place her, when she sits to hear the contempt, in a position the doctrine of bias was designed to avoid.Two procedural exits are available. The Chief Justice of the Delhi high court may, on the administrative side, refer the contempt to another bench. Or Justice Sharma may herself constitute, or recommend the constitution of, a division bench to hear it. Neither course would dilute the contempt jurisdiction. Both would answer the harder question the lay reader is right to ask: can the judge who was scandalised reliably judge the scandalising?The question that remainsThe two-track logic, for the main case, is internally consistent. The contempt track is less so.In April, Justice Sharma framed the recusal request as an attempt to put the judiciary on trial. On Thursday, she said the contempt was the price the litigants would pay for the campaign that followed. Both orders defend the institution. Yet the practical outcome is that Kejriwal will not be heard on merits by the judge whose disqualification he sought. He gets, by the back door of contempt, the bench he could not secure by the front door of recusal. He also acquires a criminal contempt notice for his trouble, to be tried before the very judge against whom his alleged contempt was directed.Whether the social-media material crosses from fair comment into scandalising the court is now for the contempt proceedings to determine. The Supreme Court has insisted, in a long line of judgments from Brahma Prakash Sharma v. State of UP to In re Prashant Bhushan, that the line must be drawn against the bedrock of free speech and public confidence. Justice Sharma’s recusal order spoke of constitutional courage. The contempt jurisdiction will require constitutional restraint. It will also require a quieter reckoning with who, exactly, should administer it.