The 4 judges who held an unprecedented press conference which many agreed has tarnished the image of Judiciary in India stated that their “Irreconcilable disagreement with the CJI” was based on the allocation of cases to different benches which was arbitrary and overlooked the “Seniority” of the judges. Since the judges have appealed to the nation to “Protect Democracy”, I as a citizen need to make out some points.
The Justice Loya death case appears to be the most disturbing case as far as the advocates such as Indira Jaisingh and Dushyant Dave are concerned and since Justice Gogoi seems to agree, we can accept that the four judges want this case to be heard before them and not under some other “Junior” judge.
It is another issue why these judges want this case only before them and donot trust the other judge. One interpretation of this is that by admitting the case, they could have embarrassed Mr Amit Shah to say that there is potentially a “Murder” charge being investigated by the Court which could consider him as a “Suspect” and when the CJI frustrated this plan, they lost their cool and held the press conference.
Additionally, it appears that the other most sensitive case now before the Supreme Court is the Aadhaar case where the “Constitutional Validity” of the system is in question. The intention of the Supreme Court was some what evident when during an earlier hearing, the Government brought an argument that “Privacy is not a fundamental right”, it jumped to constitute a 9 member bench under the previous CJI Justice Kehar and quickly brought out a 547 page judgement for a single line order “Privacy is a fundamental right under article 21 of the Indian constitution”. This defeated the argument of the Government and strengthened the argument for scrapping aadhaar. if done, the opposition can use it for embarrassing the Government much more than the GST issue.
Besides the opposition wanted to preserve their “Benami” properties which Modi was threatening to identify by making it mandatory to link property registration with Aadhaar. I feel this was more critical than the Justice Loya’s case.
The opposition felt that if the bench hearing Aadhaar can be managed by pliable jduges, they could get Aadhaar scrapped and it would be the biggest coup before 2019 elections.
Unfortunately, it appears that Justice Dipak Mishra is again frustrating them by denying an opportunity for these judges to be on the bench which can scrap Aadhaar. CJI perhaps feels that these judges may have a conflict of interest with their relationship with Mr D Raja, Mrs Indira Jaisingh, Mr Dushyant Dave etc., as regards the Aadhaar case and hence cannot be on the bench hearing any case in which there would be a strong anti-Government sentiment.
We must appreciate the vision of the CJI in this regard.
If these judges with conflict are not involved in the Aadhaar case, it would be better since the case can be decided purely on merits and not on preconceived notions of the senior judges.
Aadhaar is therefore the key to what appears to be an unprecedented move of the 4 senior judges to take on the CJI to the extent that media already started talking of his possible impeachment. They are now disappointed that the coup attempt has failed at least for the time being.
In one of the online surveys 69% respondents held them wrong and in a way “Impeached them in public perception”. This is the people’s verdict they wanted during the press conference and they should respect it.
I anticipate that out of the four at least one of them may decide to resign to uphold the principles that he wanted to demonstrate by the uprising to protect democracy. Will it be Mr Chelameshwar? or some body else?… we need to wait and observe.
Naavi
