By
K Raveendran
The
credibility of the Supreme Court was considered to be at the lowest ebb during
the tenure of chief justice Dipak Misra. The so-called ‘mutiny’ by the four
senior-most judges was described as the darkest hour of Indian judiciary,
amidst allegations of the CJI misusing his Master of the Roster powers to constitute
‘pliable’ benches ready to do the bidding of interested parties, planting
serious doubt in the minds of people about the integrity of the institution.
Justice Misra has even been accused by a retired colleague of having behaved
like an ‘agent’ of some external force, which the judge stopped short of
identifying, but the reference was quite obvious.
It
was widely believed that when Justice Ranjan Gogoi, who was one of the
participants of the unprecedented press conference called by Justice J Chelameswar,
since retired, as a ‘call of duty to the nation’, took office as the new CJI,
there would be a break from the past and that he would restore the credibility
of the apex court. But that was not to be.
It
is not even four months since Justice Gogoi took charge, but his tenure is
already dogged by controversies. Gogoi used his ‘power as the chief justice’ to
overturn the decision of the collegium headed by himself to elevate Justice
Rajendra Menon and Justice Pradeep Nandrajog of the Delhi and Rajasthan high
courts respectively to the Supreme Court and instead appointed Justice Dinesh
Maheshwari and Justice Sanjiv Khanna. Justice Maheshwari from the Karnataka
high court is the one against whom Justice Chelameswar had raised serious
allegations.
It
seems the Chief Justice was miffed by the ‘leak’ of the news of the
appointments of Menon and Nandrajog to the media and apparently the decision is
prompted by ‘additional material’. Justice Gogoi has taken great pains to
explain why he changed the collegium’s decision, but most people in judicial
circles and the public at large refuse to be convinced. In any case, the ‘leak’
has nothing to do with the calibre of the affected judges and as such the
action amounts to punishing them for no fault of theirs, unless the leak itself
can be attributed to them, which does not seem to be the case.
The
verdict in the Rafale case, in which the court could not differentiate between
the Anil Ambani group and the Mukesh Ambani ‘s original Reliance group, gave a
clumsy picture of the commitment and application of mind of the judges to their
work, apart from questions of judicial propriety in deciding substantive
issues. The excuse of the court having been misled by the government is
untenable as the court is supposed to have a mind of its own, capable of
questioning the veracity of whatever is placed before it. As the judge heading
the bench, the chief justice cannot run away from the blame.
The
CJI’s performance so far by no means adds up to the expectation and there has
been a big gap between word and the deed. He took office promising to reduce
the huge backlog of cases, the biggest bane of Indian judiciary. Barely three
months before he took over as the new CJI Justice Gogoi had stressed the need
for the judiciary to be more proactive. “Not a reform but a revolution is what
it needs, to be able to meet the challenges on the ground and to keep this
institution serviceable for a common man and relevant for the nation. For the
effectiveness of the judgments to show, the justice dispensation system has to
be made more result oriented i.e. to say, more focused on enforcement,” he had
thundered while delivering the Ramnath Goenka memorial lecture.
But
there has been no change in the highly bureaucratic approach of the court under
his leadership. His own approach in several instances has been far from being
dynamic and proactive as he left everything to routine, which is what his
predecessors have also been doing. If it has taken three months to decide on a
date to resume hearing on the Ramjanmabhoomi dispute, one can imagine the time
it takes to conclude the arguments and arrive at a decision on such a humongous
case. The ‘routine’ manner in which the reconstitution of the bench to hear the
case has been handled gives an unintended advantage to one of the parties by
default although that may never have been in the court’s mind. This is
certainly not proactive.
Even
in terms of routine, there has been a certain lack of consistency in the CJI’s
approach. This is particularly true in the case of the knotty Sabarimala case.
The controversial verdict allowing the entry of a restricted category of women
into the hill shrine had produced a deluge of review petitions. When the
petitions came up before a CJI-headed bench just a few days before the
three-month pilgrim season was to begin, the court decided to post the hearing
for January 22. The uncertainty marred the crucial Mandalam-Makaravilakku
pilgrimage, plunging the entire Kerala into turmoil and violence.
But
when two activists, who entered the temple under the cover of darkness by
disguising their identities with the help of police, approached the same bench
asking for round the clock police protection, it heard the plea on an urgent
basis and ordered the state government to provide such security. It is a
mystery why the women directly approached the Supreme Court and the court
obliged them when they should have actually gone to the Kerala high court,
which already has a specialist bench to hear matters relating to Sabarimala.
The only saving grace is that the Supreme Court saw through the game of the
women, allegedly sponsored by the state government, to use the petition to
force a decision against objections raised in the review petitions. (IPA Service)
The post Barely Four Months In Office, Cji Under A Cloud appeared first on Newspack by India Press Agency.
