Judge ni transfer cheyadam endira rey - Part2 Banana Republic Chronicles

[Sarumankabap]

The charge of contempt of court is

usually leveled by a judge at a litigant

or a third party who scandalizes or

lowers the authority of the court it's a

grave charge one that can send you to

prison

but what happens to judges who by their

conduct while in service or retirement

themselves scandalized or lower the

court's dignity the short answer is

nothing the long answer is that they may

even end up in Parliament I say this

because India is being forced to

confront for the first time in its

history the unhealthy spectacle of a

former chief justice

Ranjan Gogoi being sworn in as a member

of the Rajya Sabha as the government's

nominee so why should google emergence

as a Rajya Sabha MP matter because as

chief justice and master of the roster

he presided over or allocated two

benches that he chose several important

cases in which the Modi government was a

party and the same government's

eagerness to now give him a six-year

term as an MP suggests a disconcerting

coziness between judge and litigant a

most powerful litigant at that don't be

fooled by official spokespersons and

unofficial apologists that there is a

precedent to what Prime Minister Modi

and Ranjan Gogoi have done. yes

Ranganath mishra  was the first cji to

become a Raja Sabha MP and Bahaul

Islam the first Supreme Court judge to

become one yet

even though the circumstances of their

entry to the upper house are not

remotely comparable to Google's case

anyone foolish enough to cite them as

precedence should remember this these

examples do Modi and Gogoi no credit

Baharul Islam was rewarded by Indira

Gandhi in 1983 for delivering a

judgement favorable to a Congress Chief

Minister accused of scamming a bank and

entered the Raja Sabha six months later

so if the government's support

want to cite a slams case let them tell

us which judgments Gogoi is being

rewarded for let's turn to Ranganath

Mishra next like Islam Mishra true was a

dishonorable judge as head of a formal

Commission of Inquiry he helped the

Rajiv Gandhi government cover-up the

Congress Party's role in the November

1984 massacre of the Sikhs following

Indra Gandhi's assassination

that's probably what ensured he became

cji in the first place and then upon

retirement in 1992 he was appointed

chairman of the newly established

National Human Rights Commission a post

reserved for retired chief justices of

the Supreme Court so if someone says

what about ranganath Mishra my

answer is okay Mishra was a cover-up

specialist who was duly rewarded what is

it that Gogoi helped Modi cover-up in

any case and this is important

Mishra's entry into the Rajya Sabha in

1998 came not as a favor from the

government remember at all Bihari

Vajpayee was prime minister at the time

but as a nominee of the Opposition

Congress Party under Sonia Gandhi of

course his nomination was proof of the

unhealthy relationship between the

former judge and the Congress but it did

not represent a breach of the separation

of powers between the judiciary and the

executive that gogois nomination by the

Modi government has triggered what's

truly shocking about gogoi  going to the

Rajya Sabha as the government's nominee

is that until four months ago he was

presiding over cases in which the same

government had enormous political stakes

what does his nomination by the same

government then tell us about his

attitude towards those matters and his

impartiality as a judge justice ap Shah

a respected former Chief Justice of the

Delhi High Court has gone so far as to

say he perceives go guys

Raja Sabha seat has a quid pro quo in

the light of various judgments which was

seen as controversial the message

this nomination sends out to the

judiciary as a whole he said is that if

you give judgments that are favorable to

the executive you will be rewarded if

you don't do so you will be treated

adversely or you might be transferred or

not considered for elevation and here of

course there's no dearth of examples

remember the midnight marching orders

delivered to justice s muralidharan

right after the hearings he held on the

Delhi riots went against the government

and the police or remember justice Akhil

Qureshi who had jailed Amit Shah in 2012

and who was chosen last year by the

Supreme Court Collegium to be chief

justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court

after months of delay the Modi

government finally gotten reassigned to

the smaller court of Tripura

incidentally just as Shah is not the

first person to point to this problem

the late BJP leader Arun Jaitley said

much the same thing in 2012 and the

first law Commission warned of this

danger way back in 1958 but no one

bothered to do anything about this

problem because it seems to have suited

politician and judge alike now if we

look at go-go's actual record as CGI

they were broadly speaking three kinds

of politically sensitive cases that he

handled the first were those he presided

over which went in favor of the Modi

government especially raffle and Ioya

on the basis of what I regard as highly

dubious reasoning then the the petitions

the government wanted him to sit on and

which he obliged them by doing like the

legality of electoral bonds or the

constitutionality of scrapping article

370 the communications blockade and the

mass arrests in Jammu and Kashmir

petitions were filed yet the judge just

as Gogoi did not accord them priority

remember one of these petitions zeroed

in on the fact that the bulk of

electoral bonds sold anonymously were

being funneled into the ruling party

surely this was an issue that

the Supreme Court of India needed to

look at urgently yet Gogoi did not think

this was important and the matter

incidentally is still pending

finally there were those cases which

seemingly went against the government

especially the CBI directors matter when

the Supreme Court ordered the

reinstatement of alok varma and the

entry of women worshipers at Sabarimala

but where go Goa created an opening for

the government to eventually have its

way

so Alok Varma's I said was reinstated as

CBI director but was left powerless till

the government was able to legally move

its own man in to CBI headquarters and

the supreme Allah verdict was

immediately sent for review and then

referred to a larger bench just before

go-go he retired presumably to set the

stage for its possible eventual

overturning even if we give go goid the

benefit of doubt in all of these cases

which I mentioned perhaps these

judgments who are really the product of

his fine legal mind and not some sordid

quid pro quo there remains one fatal

flaw in his career as Chief Justice of

India which brought the court in to

distribute and now casts a shadow over

Parliament - and talking about the

manner in which he handled the

allegation of sexual harassment leveled

against him by a junior court assistant

again let's for the moment give Gogoi

the benefit of doubt on the veracity of

the actual harassment charge yet he

implicated himself by two processes that

he set in motion - supposedly clear his

name first the woman her husband and two

brothers-in-law were subjected to what

can only be described as a vicious

vendetta that included dismissal and

being framed for crimes they never

committed none of that could have

happened without a push from powerful

quarters second when this vendetta came

into the public domain along with the

woman's allegation of sexual harassment

Gogoi was instrumental in ensuring a

hideous judicial cover-up he presided

over a special sitting of the Supreme

Court convened to hear his own case

an act of astonishing judicial

impropriety that he pompously called

a matter of great public importance

touching upon the independence of the

judiciary and in this sitting he

slandered the young woman who had

complained against him and then claimed

he was the victim of some kind of big

plot to deactivate him those were his

words though an in-house inquiry

subsequently declared the women's

charges against Gogoi were baseless the

fact that they were not baseless was

confirmed by the dropping of the

fabricated extortion case against her

and her husband and of course her quiet

reinstatement by the Supreme Court this

January as for the conspiracy that Gogoi

saw in her charge nothing has been seen

or heard of it since then in any polity

that values transparency in any judicial

system that opposed the rule of law the

young woman's allegations would have

been taken seriously at the very least

her real statement ought to have led to

a clamor for the case against Gogoi to

be re-examined impartially

and ought to have scuppered any hopes he

had of a post-retirement placement but

India's rulers clearly value go-going

more than they do elementary principles

of justice and India's judiciary sadly

seems not to want to cross swords with

the political establishment which tells

us enough about the true fate of the

separation of powers between the

judiciary and the executive now the war

against the separation of powers began

early in Modi's tenure as prime minister

and the goys emergence as a government

nominated legislator is an indication of

how successful the assault has been in

2014

Modi launched a two-pronged attack on

the independence of the judiciary by

sending the recently retired cji P

Sadashiva to Kerala as governor he

dangled the prospect of attractive post

retirement sin occurs for judges who

play ball but he also sought to directly

control the process of appointing judges

by pushing the National Judicial

Appointments Commission

or NJ AC as an alternative to the

Collegium system the judiciary killed

the NJ AC seeing it as an encroachment

on their own prerogatives but could come

up with no defense against the twin

viruses of government blandishments and

pressure at least two recent CGI's were

apparently hobbled by the prospect of

corruption probes against themselves or

their kin thanks in part to Cali couples

suicide note while the sexual harassment

come vendetta matter and perhaps

additional issues cast a shadow over

Gogoi stereo greater men than he have

been known to strike Faustian bargain z'

for less other democracies have

investigated and in some cases indicted

their leaders on the basis of Diaries

official documents tax papers and

affidavits there's Israel South Korea

Brazil Italy to name a few recent

examples but in India history will

record that it was the apex court which

refused to even sanction a probe into

the Birla Sahara papers judge lawyer's

death the refusal of the CBI to appeal

the discharge of Amit Shah from the sera

Bodeen murder case and the as yet

unanswered aspects of the Rafal aircraft

deal the public at large may have been

in the dark about the factors preying on

the mind of key judges until the wire

helped break all those stories but the

men in power had all the information

they needed to carry the day not

surprisingly the NJ AC was soon

forgotten by Modi why bother with a

formal Commission if the system of

judicial appointments was under control

and the allocation of sensitive cases

was taking place in a manner that was to

the government's liking in an act of

courage and defiance for senior judges

of the Supreme Court held an

unprecedented press conference in

January 2018 to warn how the undermining

of judicial independence was posing a

serious threat to democracy two years

later it's

clear that nothing has changed go guys

participation alongside justices

chellamaswer madan Lokur and

Korean Joseph in that press meeting

appears anomalous in hindsight since he

later manifested all the ills in his own

functioning as chief justice that the

then CGI Deepak Mishra had been accused

of and of course Gogoi took them to

their logical conclusion if you can't

beat them join them

the saying goes I'm not sure Gogoi ever

wanted to beat back the government's

encroachments on the functioning of the

judiciary

what's crystal clear however is that he

has willingly joined the camp of those

who have contempt for the Constitution

and the courts and this is surely a

matter of great public importance

touching upon the Independence of the

judiciary

 

 

 

[LordOfMud]