By K Raveendran
The seat of the Chief Justice of India seems to be under the spell of a black planet, with the result that every incumbent comes under a cloud even before he occupies the august position.
No one has any clue about such a planet, but its evil spell seems to be all-pervasive. The black spell began with the tenure of CJI Dipak Misra, although his trouble could be traced back to his own misdeeds rather than mischief by the planet, and has cast its shadow on every incumbent after him.
Dipak Misra’s chief justiceship was dogged by controversy even before he assumed the country’s highest judicial position. He was found to have made false declarations, with the full knowledge that what he stated was not true, to secure a land allotment. While being a lawyer in Odisha, he had obtained the lease for two acres of agricultural land on the claim that neither he nor his family members owned any land. The lease was ultimately cancelled as it was discovered that he had misrepresented facts.
CJI Deepak Misra’s tenure would be recorded in the Supreme Court annals as one of the most controversial. The nation was shocked to see four senior ‘rebel’ judges stage a ‘mutiny’, and summon a ‘call of national duty’ press conference to question some of the undesirable tendencies in the functioning of the apex court. Most significantly, one of them was a future chief justice, while the three were senior enough to occupy the highest position in the country’s judiciary. The judges raised serious concern about the ‘misuse’ of the master of the roster privileges of the chief justice to pick preferred benches to handle issues that were sensitive to the ruling Establishment.
The black planet was apparently waiting to cast its evil eye on Dipak Misra’s successor as well. When Justice Ranjan Gogoi, one of the ‘foursome’ rebel judges, assumed office, it was thought that he would turn a new leaf, as he was well aware of the systemic failures in the set-up of the apex court. But his tenure turned out to be even more clumsy, as a 35-year old lady staff member filed an affidavit alleging sexual misconduct against the Chief Justice of India. But Gogoi’s response was worse than the alleged original offence, hounding out the lady and her family, who were destined to suffer the power and authority of the highest judicial post of the country without any defence.
The man who had criticised his predecessor for ‘bench-hunting’ constituted a bench headed by himself to hear the sexual assault case in which he was the accused and promptly cleared himself of any blame: a clear case of an accused sitting in judgment of his own case. But Gogoi did it as if there was nothing wrong. Apart from the sex scandal, some of his verdicts were also picked up by critics for lack of judicial integrity, the evidence of which came a few months later when he accepted nomination as a Rajya Sabha member.
Gogoi’s successor, Justice S A Bobde, who is now approaching his last day in office, was caught up in a few unseemly controversies, including one in which he accepted the hospitality of a state government by using a special chopper provided by the Madhya Pradesh government to visit the Kanha National Park and from there to his home town in Nagpur. The CJI, a self-declared bike enthusiast, was pictured riding a Harley Davidson, that too without wearing a helmet, and the picture went viral on the social media. People were not amused by a clarification by Justice Bobde later that he did not know the owner, who happened to be the son of a local BJP leader and that the bike was on its parking stand.
Apart from the verdicts on Centre’s new farm laws, which stayed the laws, for which according to the court’s own admission it had no powers, as it amounted to straying into the exclusive domain of the legislature, the highlight of CJI Bobde’s tenure was that he acted as a bridge between two CJIs, the first his predecessor, by clearing Gogoi from the charge of sexual harassment, and paving the way for his successor, Justice N V Ramana, by dismissing a complaint by Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y S Jagan Mohan Reddy after an in-house enquiry, the findings of which have not been revealed.
In what he must have considered as a pre-emptive move, Jagan Mohan had sent a letter to Chief Justice Bobde alleging that Justice Ramana had been influencing the judges of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in favour of Chandrababu Naidu’s Telugu Desam and that the ‘nexus’ harboured animosity towards himself and his government.
Justice Ramana is yet to assume office as the new CJI. We have to keep our fingers crossed as to what the dark planet is conjuring up next. (IPA Service)
