CJI Dipak Misra/ Image Courtesy: DNA

With the rising number of cases of attacks on writers and the freedom of expression, this observation has been welcomed by a number of writers.

Activist and Malayalam editor in the National Book Trust Rubin D’Cruz said, “The Supreme Court’s observation on the petition to ban Meesa is a landmark statement on freedom of speech and expression. This comes on a continuation to the Chennai High Court order on writer Perumal Murgan’s case. It is a very reaffirming development in the present scenario where artists and intellectuals are being threatened and ridiculed.”

Konkani writer Damodar Mauzo, who was one of the names on the hit list of Sanatan Sanstha, and who has recently been given protection by the Goa police, said, “At a time when people are losing faith, this comes as a moral boost to the free thinking community, particularly the community of writers. I’m very happy with this judgement. Freedom of expression upheld by the Supreme Court. This will strengthen people’s faith in the Judiciary.”

Malayalam poet K Satchidanandan impressed on the importance of context. He said, “I am very happy to note that the Supreme Court has taken cognisance of the Writers’ unfettered freedom of expression, and taken a stand against the banning of books. It has also made a clear distinction between deliberate pornography and creative writing. A character’s s conversation in a novel cannot be read like a press statement by the author. And no reader is supposed to identify the writer with his characters as fiction is not autobiography. The language the characters use too depends on the narrative context and the background of the character. Hence the whole case is baseless and filed with the deliberate political intention to create divisions in the society. The publication of the book has been widely welcomed in Kerala though a few miscreants have burnt its copies. Most writers in Kerala are in solidarity with S. Hareesh.”

Kureepuzha Sreekumar, who is a Malayalam poet and who was also targeted by the RSS, had similar concern. He said, “Banning the works of any writer is an attack on their creative thoughts. As readers, we have the right to read whatever we want. At the same time, the reader also has the liberty to dislike the book if they want to. Let the people read the work and let them decide. If they don’t like they will stop reading his work. We should not jump into conclusions before reading it. The Supreme Court’s comment is welcomed. I congratulate the court’s decision to stand with the writer.”

K P Ramanunni is a Malayalam writer who has faced threats from Islamic fundamentalist groups. He donated his Sahitya Akademi award prize money to Junaid Khan’s family. Sharing the enthusiasm of other authors, Ramanunni said, “The Supreme Court of India upholds our Constitution. As writers and artists we are indebted to this institution. It has always upheld the constitutional rights – freedom of speech and expression — especially for the writers. The Supreme Court’s stand on S Hareesh’s case is a very welcomed one. But I would also like to point this; it should also take a clear stand against the mob attacks on the writers. The mob in this country uses a third degree violence method to snub our rights. The court should bring out a law against legally and socially banning of a book.

If the final judgement comes in favour of writer S Hareesh, then it not only just a victory over a case of a writer, it’s a victory for the rationalists, journalists and intellectuals like Dabholkar, Kalburgi, Pansare and Gauri Lankesh, and for the values they stood for. They were murdered by the right wing fundamentalist group because they wanted to curb their freedom of expressions.”

Courtesy: Indian Cultural Forum
 

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Image Courtesy: PTI

New Delhi: In a response to a PIL filed by former union law minister Shanti Bhushan, The Supreme Court reiterated on Friday that The Chief Justice is the spokesperson of the court and has the power to allocate cases to fellow judges as the ‘Master of Roster.’
 
“The ‘Chief Justice of India’ is an individual judge and not the powerful collective of five senior-most judges of the Supreme Court called the ‘Collegium’, the Supreme Court held on Friday. It is this exclusive authority of this individual judge, who is the “spokesperson of the court”, to allocate cases to fellow judges as the ‘Master of Roster’, a Bench of Justices A.K. Sikri and Ashok Bhushan declared in their separate but concurring opinions,” reported The Hindu.
 
The PIL demanded that the ‘Collegium of Supreme Court judges collectively allocate cases in the apex court rather than leave the entire power in the hands of the CJI in his administrative capacity as ‘Master of Roster.’
 
This is the third time in eight months that the Supreme Court has declared its Chief Justice as the ‘Master of Roster.’
 
Justice Bhushan, who penned a separate concurring judgment, said the “rich conventions and practices of the Supreme Court which are time-tested” should not be tinkered with.
 
In January 2018, CJP had carried reports of how the CJI allocating all the power to himself could hamper the justice system. In January, Four of the five senior-most judges of the Supreme Court – Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan Lokur and Kurian Joseph – in a letter to Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra expressed concern on certain judicial orders passed by the top court which has “adversely affected the overall functioning of the justice delivery system.”
 
CJP reported that “The judges have—months after the issue has been festering– literally blown the lid off a growing rift with Chief Justice Dipak Misra. The explosive statements were made at a press conference “The four of us are convinced that unless this institution is preserved and it maintains its equanimity, democracy will not survive in this country,” Justice J Chelameswar said on the lawns of his residence. He is the second-most-senior judge of the Supreme Court. Being pushed to the wall, the four senior-most judges after the CJI, said that their concerns include cases of far-reaching consequences” being allocated without transparency. They made available a letter written by them to the Chief Justice two months ago, alleging “selective assignment of cases to preferred judges” and that “sensitive cases were being allotted to junior judges.”
 
“Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan Lokur and Kurien Joseph said repeated attempts to alert the Chief Justice to their concerns – including a meeting with him this morning – had failed to make any progress which is why they decided to voice their complaints publicly,” the report added.
 
“In his petition, Shanti Bhushan had sought, inter alia, that the power to list matters be shared with the senior-most judges of the Supreme Court, contending that the Master of Roster power “cannot be unguided and unbridled discretionary power, exercised arbitrarily by the Hon’ble Chief Justice of India.” It was also claimed by him that the manner in which politically sensitive matters were being listed before select judges was a violation of the Supreme Court Rules, 2013 and Handbook of Practice and Procedure, 2017,” reported News18.
 
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It is the hegemonic notion of maintaining patriarchal, feudal and caste status quo that wants to protect powerful institutions and people from being accountable – and imagines it a scandal if an alleged  wrongdoing is investigated. The archaic common law maxim; rex non potest peccare (the King can do no wrong) is rooted in this. The illogical reprimands and criticisms against the attempted impeachment motion against the Chief Justice of India need to be examined in this light.

No human being however high an office she occupies can be devoid of regular human failings. There is no magic that makes a person more and more angelic as she climbs up the ladder of power. On the contrary the presumption should be the adage that power can tend to corrupt. Therefore accountability and transparency should increase in direct proportion to a person’s power. On the other hand in a large democracy, governance would be rendered impossible if every allegation is taken at face value.

That is precisely why the drafters of the Constitution have made sure that there are checks against abuse or misuse of power by each and every Constitutional authority including the President of India. And Article 124(4) of the Constitution of India is meant precisely to act as a check on any unbridled power that the Chief Justice of India may exercise as the head of the judicial branch of government. If one notices the reins of control of this check is with the Parliament – which consists of representatives of people.

To say that the invoking or implementation of any provision of the Constitution is a “bad” precedent is downright laughable. All provisions of the Constitution are meant to be invoked or they wouldn’t be there in the first place. Of course, every Constitutional lawyer knows this, then why this hue and cry over the introduction of the impeachment motion. The very people who were silent during the bad precedent where a sitting high court judge – Justice Karnan – was found guilty of contempt without any Constitutional mandate for such an action, are raising hell on the impeachment notice. Here one needs to remember that the hue and cry had already started even before the Vice President took the decision to reject investigation of the Chief Justice.

To understand this one needs to understand the dynamics of the legal profession and the judiciary. The judiciary is the least diversified and representative of all the branches of government. In fact the lack of diversity in the higher judiciary is regressive. Look at the case of Justice Dipak Misra himself – the nephew of the 21^st Chief Justice of India, Justice Ranganath Misra who served between 1990-91. While the legislature and the bureaucracy has embraced people from all walks of life, classes, castes, genders, occupations etc., the higher judiciary is still a closed clique. This clique perpetuates itself using judicial independence as its camouflage.

Justice Misra’s tenure as the Chief Justice of India itself is an example of how judicial independence can be compromised – as evidenced from the allegations that have been raised against him in the notice given to the Vice President of India. And this is not the first time – there have been precedents in the persona of Chief Justices A. N. Ray and M. H. Beg in 1973 and 1977 respectively where the judiciary was completely compromised to the executive. It’s just that the modus operandi has changed and people with a certain ideological bent are increasingly being elevated to the bench and this damage would take decades to be repaired and it would remain difficult to repair unless the judiciary self reflects and reforms its own appointment process to make itself more diverse, democratic and accountable.

Of course the Congress is not beyond this judicial politics. Apart from the fact that it was the Congress that orchestrated the judicial coup of 1973 and 1977 – the party definitely has vested interests in keeping the judiciary within the feudal stranglehold of non-transparency and many senior Congress leaders are also part of this clique viz. P. Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi etc. to name just a few. The opening of the opposition statement elucidating the allegations against the Chief Justice is very clear; “We wish this day had never come”. We need to understand that we live in a polity that is far right and in that polity the Congress is responding from the centre of right. In the last four years – foundations for which was systematically laid in the earlier NDA regimes – the autonomy of various Constitutional and statutory bodies have been encroached upon – so much so that senior bureaucrats and investigation officials are complaining about direct interference in their work from the Prime Minister’s  Office. The opposition including the Congress are at the receiving end of this – and the only recourse they had in these circumstances was the judiciary and the current Chief is being seen as someone pulling that carpet from this. If unchecked and in the event of the NDA coming back to power and with a future Chief Justice willing to play an amenable role like the current one is alleged to be playing – it can decimate the opposition – particularly the Congress – with their resources – particularly cash running dry. Otherwise, in my opinion the Congress would also prefer the judiciary to be insulated from democratization and remain inaccessible to most people.

In so far as whether the allegations against Justice Misra can be substantiated or not could only have been answered if the Vice President had accepted the motion of impeachment set up a committee. Even if the process had reached the stage of being discussed on the floor of the parliament, it is unlikely to have been passed because the numbers are stacked against the motion in the Parliament and the voting would definitely  have been on party lines with the NDA fully backing Justice Misra. On the other hand, the whole process could have been be dragged till Justice Misra’s retirement. In either case the only fallout would be the notoriety that Justice Misra would take into history as the first Chief Justice of India against whom an impeachment motion was presented – making his term as the Chief Justice much more controversial than that of Justice A. N. Ray.

Democracy does not need opaque institutions and there is no honour and dignity in lack of transparency. From sexual harassment to probity in public life, democracy does not need institutions that sweep their dirty linen under the bedspread – but institutions that have the courage to wash their dirty linen in public and admit to their faults, paving the way for corrective measures for there is no indignity in washing dirty linen – in fact it is healthy to do so. Whenever there are serious allegations of misdemeanor in public life – the only way to salvage the situation is by having a mechanism to address the same and being transparent with the processes that look into the misdemeanor.

It is immaterial whether Justice Misra is guilty or not of the allegations raised in the impeachment motion. What is material is the credibility of the judiciary which is at stake. And credibility is restored by transparency, not by shutting down questioning.

Courtesy: Kafila.online
 

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Last week, in an unprecedented move, over 60 Members of Parliament belonging to seven different opposition parties led by the Congress, submitted a written petition to Naidu, who is also Chairman of the Rajya Sabha, demanding the impeachment of Supreme Court Chief Justice Dipak Misra. The move came just the day after the SC dismissed a PIL demanding an SIT probe into the mysterious death of Judge BH Loya. CJI Misra was a member of the three judge bench that dismissed the PIL.
 
Misra has been in the eye of the storm since January 12, 2018, when in an unprecedented move, four sitting judges of the Supreme Court came out and addressed a press conference alleging nepotism in the apex court. They alleged that the Chief Justice was assigning important and controversial cases only to a select few judges. They feared this cherry picking could have an impact on the judgment in these high profile cases, including the case pertaining to Judge Loya’s death.
 
But Naidu quashed the impeachment motion stating in his order, “The Honourable Members of Parliament who have presented the petition are unsure of their own case.” He further said, “… the phrases used by the Honourable Members of Parliament themselves indicate a mere suspicion, a conjecture or an assumption. The same certainty does not constitute proof ‘beyond reasonable doubt’, which is required to make out a case of ‘proved misbehaviour’ under Article 124 (4).” 
 
According to Article 124 (4) of the Indian Constitution, “A Judge of the Supreme Court shall not be removed from his office except by an order of the President passed after an address by each House of Parliament supported by a majority of the total membership of that House and by a majority of not less than two-thirds of the members of that House present and voting has been presented to the President in the same session for such removal on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity.”

The entire order may be read here.
 

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Image: Twitter
 

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The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) on Saturday passed a resolution saying the differences of four senior-most judges with Chief Justice Dipak Misra should be considered by the full bench of the apex court. Expressing “grave concern” over the differences between the senior judges and the CJI, SCBA President and senior advocate Vikas Singh said that all PILs should be looked into either by the CJI or senior judges who form part of the apex court collegium. Taking note of the concerns raised by four senior judges led by Justice J Chelameswar over assigning of cases, the bar body suggested that even the PILs listed for hearing on January 15 be transferred from other benches to either the bench headed by the CJI or benches led by the members of the collegium.
 
Singh said that at the emergency executive meeting, grave concern was expressed over the differences between the four judges and the CJI. On Friday, Justices Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, M B Lokur and Jurian Joseph had mounted a virtual revolt against the chief justice, listing a litany of problems including the assigning of cases.

 
The judges had said that there were certain issues afflicting the country’s highest court and warned that they could destroy Indian democracy. The unprecedented news conference had left the judiciary and observers stunned, leaving uncertain how this open dissension in the hallowed institution would be resolved.

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