The case that saved Indian democracy
SUPREME COURT OF INDIA
ARVIND P DATAR IN THE HINDU
The judgment in Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala, whose 40th anniversary falls today, was crucial in upholding the supremacy of the Constitution and preventing authoritarian rule by a single party
Exactly forty years ago, on April 24, 1973, Chief Justice Sikri and 12 judges of the Supreme Court assembled to deliver the most important judgment in its history. The case of Kesavananda Bharati v State of Kerala had been heard for 68 days, the arguments commencing on October 31, 1972, and ending on March 23, 1973. The hard work and scholarship that had gone into the preparation of this case was breathtaking. Literally hundreds of cases had been cited and the then Attorney-General had made a comparative chart analysing the provisions of the Constitutions of 71 different countries!
Core question
All this effort was to answer just one main question: was the power of Parliament to amend the Constitution unlimited? In other words, could Parliament alter, amend, abrogate any part of the Constitution even to the extent of taking away all fundamental rights?
Article 368, on a plain reading, did not contain any limitation on the power of Parliament to amend any part of the Constitution. There was nothing that prevented Parliament from taking away a citizen’s right to freedom of speech or his religious freedom. But the repeated amendments made to the Constitution raised a doubt: was there any inherent or implied limitation on the amending power of Parliament?
The 703-page judgment revealed a sharply divided court and, by a wafer-thin majority of 7:6, it was held that Parliament could amend any part of the Constitution so long as it did not alter or amend “the basic structure or essential features of the Constitution.” This was the inherent and implied limitation on the amending power of Parliament. This basic structure doctrine, as future events showed, saved Indian democracy and Kesavananda Bharati will always occupy a hallowed place in our constitutional history.
Supreme Court v Indira Gandhi
It is supremely ironical that the basic structure theory was first introduced by Justice Mudholkar eight years earlier by referring to a 1963 decision of the Supreme Court of Pakistan. Chief Justice Cornelius — yes, Pakistan had a Christian Chief Justice and, later, a Hindu justice as well — had held that the President of Pakistan could not alter the “fundamental features” of their Constitution.
The Kesavananda Bharati case was the culmination of a serious conflict between the judiciary and the government, then headed by Mrs Indira Gandhi. In 1967, the Supreme Court took an extreme view, in the Golak Nath case, that Parliament could not amend or alter any fundamental right. Two years later, Indira Gandhi nationalised 14 major banks and the paltry compensation was made payable in bonds that matured after 10 years! This was struck down by the Supreme Court, although it upheld the right of Parliament to nationalise banks and other industries. A year later, in 1970, Mrs Gandhi abolished the Privy Purses. This was a constitutional betrayal of the solemn assurance given by Sardar Patel to all the erstwhile rulers. This was also struck down by the Supreme Court. Ironically, the abolition of the Privy Purses was challenged by the late Madhavrao Scindia, who later joined the Congress Party.
Smarting under three successive adverse rulings, which had all been argued by N.A. Palkhivala, Indira Gandhi was determined to cut the Supreme Court and the High Courts to size and she introduced a series of constitutional amendments that nullified the Golak Nath, Bank Nationalisation and Privy Purses judgments. In a nutshell, these amendments gave Parliament uncontrolled power to alter or even abolish any fundamental right.
These drastic amendments were challenged by Kesavananda Bharati, the head of a math in Kerala, and several coal, sugar and running companies. On the other side, was not only the Union of India but almost all the States which had also intervened. This case had serious political overtones with several heated exchanges between N.A. Palkhivala for the petitioners and H.M. Seervai and Niren De, who appeared for the State of Kerala and the Union of India respectively.
The infamous Emergency was declared in 1975 and, by then, eight new judges had been appointed to the Supreme Court. A shocking attempt was made by Chief Justice Ray to review the Kesavananda Bharati decision by constituting another Bench of 13 judges. In what is regarded as the finest advocacy that was heard in the Supreme Court, Palkhivala made an impassioned plea for not disturbing the earlier view. In a major embarrassment to Ray, it was revealed that no one had filed a review petition. How was this Bench then constituted? The other judges strongly opposed this impropriety and the 13-judge Bench was dissolved after two days of arguments. The tragic review was over but it did irreversible damage to the reputation of Chief Justice A.N. Ray.
Constitutional rights saved
If the majority of the Supreme Court had held (as six judges indeed did) that Parliament could alter any part of the Constitution, India would most certainly have degenerated into a totalitarian State or had one-party rule. At any rate, the Constitution would have lost its supremacy. Even Seervai later admitted that the basic structure theory preserved Indian democracy. One has to only examine the amendments that were made during the Emergency. The 39th Amendment prohibited any challenge to the election of the President, Vice-President, Speaker and Prime Minister, irrespective of the electoral malpractice. This was a clear attempt to nullify the adverse Allahabad High Court ruling against Indira Gandhi. The 41st Amendment prohibited any case, civil or criminal, being filed against the President, Vice-President, Prime Minister or the Governors, not only during their term of office but forever. Thus, if a person was a governor for just one day, he acquired immunity from any legal proceedings for life. If Parliament were indeed supreme, these shocking amendments would have become part of the Constitution.
Thanks to Kesavananda Bharati, Palkhivala and the seven judges who were in the majority, India continues to be the world’s largest democracy. The souls of Nehru, Patel, Ambedkar and all the founding fathers of our Constitution can really rest in peace.
(Arvind P. Datar is a senior advocate of the Madras High Court.)
India’s benign constitutional revolution
WE THE PEOPLE
By Shivprasad Swaminathan Published in THE HINDU
How ‘We the People’ came to be the source of authority of the Constitution
This is the story of how and why the framers of the Constitution of India deliberately designed a procedural error in the adoption of the new Constitution with a view to severing the seamless transition of legal authority from the British Crown-in-Parliament to the new Republic of India. The deliberate procedural error consisted in a deviation from the Constitution making procedure prescribed by the Indian Independence Act, 1947 — the law enacted by the British Parliament granting India independence and formally authorising the Constituent Assembly to draft a Constitution for the newly liberated state. To be sure, the framers of the Constitution of India were not the first, and indeed they were not the last to deliberately incorporate such procedural errors in the process of Constitution making. The founders of the Constitutions of several other states including Ireland, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Ghana, which were being liberated from the British Empire, took such a step. In doing so, they were all motivated by the same goal: that of ensuring constitutional ‘autochthony.’
Constitutional autochthony
The etymological roots of ‘autochthony,’ which is not to be confused with ‘autonomy,’ are to be found in the Greek autos (self) and chthon (earth). The goal of constitutional autochthony is to deliver an indigenous Constitution, the source of whose ‘authority’ can be located in the new state’s own soil. The dominant academic view in the middle of the 20th Century was that autochthony could not be achieved simply by drafting an original Constitution or verbally invoking We the People as the source of its authority, for autochthony does not so much concern the content of the Constitution as its pedigree: the chain of legal validity authorising it.
This proposition found doctrinal support in the influential theory propounded by the legal philosopher, Hans Kelsen, which had it that it was inconceivable for a legal system to split into two independent legal systems through a purely legal process. One of the implications of Kelsen’s theory was that the basic norm (grundnorm) of the imperial predecessor’s Constitution would continue to be at the helm of the legal system of the newly liberated former colony despite the legal transfer of power, precisely because the transfer of power was recognised as ‘legal’ by the Constitution of the imperial predecessor.
On Kelsen’s account, only an ‘unlawful’ or ‘revolutionary’ act could ensure an autochthonous Constitution by rending asunder all continuity with the imperial predecessor.
Such break in legal continuity is automatically achieved where a former colony’s independence is won as the result of an armed revolution, as was the case with the United States of America. Independence in such instances is not granted ‘legally’ by the Crown-in-Parliament and the Constitution of the newly liberated former colony is in no way authorised by the imperial predecessor. The situation is very different where independence of a former colony is not brought about by armed revolution, but is ‘legally’ granted by the imperial predecessor. This was the case with India, Pakistan, Ireland, Sri Lanka and Ghana whose independence was the result of the British Crown-in-Parliament’s enactment of separate statutes of independence (Independence Act) for each of them. The statutes of independence also set up Constituent Assemblies authorising them to draft new Constitutions for each of these States. Following the constitution-making procedure stipulated in the statute of independence would have meant that the validity of the new Constitution could ultimately be traced to an imperial grant. The mere verbal invocation of We the People as the ‘source’ of authority in such cases would have rung hollow, apart from being jurisprudentially implausible since the source of authority of the new Constitution would continue to be the imperial predecessor’s Constitution. In such cases, it was thought that since there was no ‘revolution,’ one had to be deliberately made up in order to secure an autochthonous Constitution. Accordingly, as John Finnis argues, the framers of new Commonwealth Constitutions took great care to do something illegal “so as to make up a revolution, however contrived.”
Irish influence
The Irish were the pioneers in conceiving the idea of a benign legal revolution geared towards constitutional autochthony. Ireland was granted independence under the Irish Free State Constitution Act, 1922 enacted by the British Crown-in-Parliament which also authorised the Irish Constituent Assembly to draft a Constitution for the newly liberated state. Thus, the Irish Constitution of 1922 was not autochthonous.
Though it was drafted by an indigenous Constituent Assembly, its chain of legal validity could be traced to an imperial statutory grant. With a view to changing this state of affairs, in 1937 the Irish Parliament amended the Constitution by deliberately violating the procedure for amendment stipulated in the 1922 Constitution and put the amended Constitution for acceptance in a referendum. Going one step further, the Irish Parliament also repealed the Irish Free State Constitution Act, 1922 enacted by the British Parliament, though it was not empowered to do so. It is widely accepted that this successfully severed the chain of validity with the Crown-in-Parliament and ensured a truly autochthonous Constitution. The framers of the Indian Constitution appear to have rehearsed the Irish route to autochthony to the extent possible in Indian conditions.
Independence was formally granted to India by the Crown-in-Parliament’s enactment of the Indian Independence Act, 1947 though the executive decision to grant India independence was arrived at earlier in the Cabinet Mission Plan (1946). It was under the Cabinet Mission Plan that the Constituent Assembly was envisaged and charged with the mandate of drafting the new Constitution for India. This was legally recognised in Section 8 of the Independence Act. The Cabinet Mission Plan had envisaged that the new Constitution would be put to the Crown-in-Parliament for approval. Though the Indian Independence Act did not reiterate this requirement, it did specify that the new Constitution drafted by the Constituent Assembly would have to receive the assent of the Governor General of India, who would assent to such law in the name of the British Crown.
The framers introduced two deliberate procedural errors in the enactment of the Constitution of India in violation of the Independence Act: a) They did not put the Constitution to the approval of the either the British Parliament as envisaged by the Cabinet Mission Plan or the Governor-General as envisaged in the Indian Independence Act 1947; b) Following the Irish precedent, Article 395 of the Constitution of India repealed the Indian Independence Act — something the Constituent Assembly did not have the authorisation to do. In doing so, the framers not only repudiated the source which authorised them to enact the Constitution but it was also a denial, albeit symbolic, of Indian independence being a grant of the imperial Crown-in-Parliament. This ensured that the chain of constitutional validity did not extend all the way to the Crown-in-Parliament, thus delivering a completely autochthonous Constitution. In this fashion, We the People, through the members of the Constituent Assembly, came to be the ‘source’ of authority of the Constitution, rather than the authority being traceable to the Indian Independence Act enacted by the British Crown-in-Parliament.
Why did it matter?
This quest for autochthony is likely to come across to some as an abstruse quibble that shouldn’t concern anyone other than the most pedantic legal theorists. There were, however, two reasons why the framers of new Commonwealth Constitutions felt constrained to pay such close attention to it. Firstly, it was feared that the British Crown-in-Parliament could, however improbably, reassert its authority over the newly liberated state by repealing the statute of independence and abrogating the new Constitution. There was, of course, no immediate apprehension of the British taking such a step. All the same, the framers of new Commonwealth Constitutions would have found, as Geoffrey Marshall notes, merely prudential reassurances to be precarious pegs to hang their nation’s independence on. Secondly, for sentimental considerations, the framers would have been loath to let the new Constitution be grounded in an imperial grant or be assented to by the British Crown. They would have wanted the new Constitution to be truly autochthonous, stemming from the authority of We the People so that an independent future could, albeit symbolically, be insulated from a troubled imperial past.
(Shivprasad Swaminathan is Assistant Professor, Jindal Global Law School)
Brazenness of decisions inherent to political governance in India
DHANANJAY MAHAPATRA IN THE TIMES OF INDIA
Comptroller and auditor general Vinod Rai recently set the political arena ablaze by saying that he was appalled by the brazenness of government decisions. He did not elaborate which were those decisions, when were they taken and their effect on the people, country and its economy. Before and during the Emergency, government decisions were inscrutable. They were taken as inviolable diktat because of the rasping repercussions it entailed to those bravehearts who opposed them publicly. This mindset allowed the political class to be brazen about decisions.Post-Emergency, public scrutiny of government decisions gained currency but brazenness seldom exited the power corridors.
A rag-tag political coalition in Janata Party came to power in 1977 mainly because its leaders served jail terms for raising their voice against excesses on people, But, could it prove anything against those who brazenly perpetrated the excesses on people?
A prime minister was assassinated by her Sikh bodyguards. What followed was brazen and brutal mass murder of Sikhs on the streets of the national capital and other parts of the country. Thousands were slaughtered in cold blood leaving permanent scars on the entire community. After nearly three decades, the question remains: Who got punished for that brazen mayhem?
Bofors scam was a political game-changer. On the plank of honesty and transparency, certain politicians toppled the ruling party but failed to prove anything for the next two decades about the brazenness in which bribes were paid in procuring one of the finest field guns for Indian Army. The CBI in its charge sheet gave details of what was going on then at 7, Race Course Road but could prove nothing during the trial, inviting judicial wrath. In 1993, those at the helm of a minority government brazenly bribed MPs to secure their votes on the floor of the House during a trust vote. The long arm of the law cast a shadow close to the then prime minister, but in the end did not touch him. The other conspirators also escaped.
In the 21st century, the MPs fell back on an old method – taking money for asking questions on the floor of the House. The disqualification of a MP in the 1950s was no deterrent. As many as 11 MPs faced disqualification for their brazen “cash-for-query” professionalism, throwing parliamentary decorum and their responsibilities and duties as representatives of people to the wind.If these were political brazenness coupled with complicity from the bureaucracy and investigating agencies, there were instances of brazenness in other spheres of governance.The law allowed the government to acquire land for public purposes to build infrastructure, institutions and industries. But the ‘public purpose” clause has been brazenly invoked by authorities to acquire precious fertile agricultural land only to be re-categorized and transferred to realtors for personal gain, turning a blind eye to the plight of the poor farmers and also to its ill-effects on food grain production.
Poverty and backwardness continues to haunt a large section of Indian society even 65 years after independence from colonial rule. Instead of laying out a proper strategy to alleviate poverty, the Planning Commission brazenly mocked at the poor by fixing the poverty line at Rs 32 per day. If you earn Rs 33 a day, then you are not poor! If one wants an example of brazenness in spending public funds to achieve zero result, then one need not look further than the Yamuna river. More than 18 years ago, the Supreme Court took over monitoring of steps taken by governments to make the river water potable. After three governments – Delhi, Uttar Pradesh and Haryana -spent more than Rs 5,000 crore in the last two decades, the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) gave its verdict: Yamuna is a drain with not a single drop of fresh water as long as it flows in its 22 km stretch in Delhi.
These are only a few of the appallingly brazen decisions and actions of the governments in the last couple of decades. This could be the reason why people in recent times have started leveling allegations brazenly against the political class.
They have waited in vain for decades hoping against hope that the political class would fulfill the basic promise “we the people” made to ourselves – “Justice, social, economic and political”. Why has the political class or the governments failed to ensure justice to people despite they empowering their representatives with every power under the Constitution?
Probably, the political class has failed to strike a balance between power that is conferred on them and the intent to do justice. The situation reminds one of the famous saying of French mathematician, physicist and philosopher Blaise Pascal, who had said, “Justice without power is inefficient; power without justice is tyranny… Justice and power must therefore be brought together so that whatever is just may be powerful, and whatever is powerful may be just.”
dhananjay.mahapatra@timesgroup.com
Continuing onslaught on the CAG
CAG
The work of India’s supreme auditor cannot be put through an audit unless the institution itself initiates one
The relentless campaign against the Comptroller and Auditor-General, of an unprecedented ferocity, compels me to write again on the subject.
First, has the CAG caused a political and constitutional crisis, as some have argued? All that the CAG does is to submit audit reports. Any audit report, if it is a good report, is bound to contain elements that can be used for a criticism of the government. Using the report to stall Parliament was a clear, declared political decision of the Opposition. To say that the CAG shares the responsibility for this amounts to saying that the CAG should not have submitted a report at all, or should have submitted a totally bland report from which no party can pick up any point for criticising the government.
G. Mohan Gopal, a highly respected legal expert, makes two main points (The Indian Express, 10 September 2012): the fallibility of the CAG, and giving illegal advice to the government.
Fallibility
The fallibility of the CAG is a truism; no one ever denied it. There are two important procedural safeguards against errors in the audit reports. In drafting paragraphs for inclusion in the audit report, substantiation has to be provided for every remark through ‘key documents’. This is a stringent requirement. After such internal procedures, when the first draft of the audit report is ready, it is sent for comments to the Ministry or organisation under audit, and is revised in the light of comments received. If I am not wrong, this process is repeated more than once. At every stage, the executive can draw attention to errors of fact or understanding or law, if any, in the report. In fact, apart from corrections or revisions being made in response to comments, the initial objections themselves are dropped in many cases in the light of explanations by the executive. Not every comment initially formulated finds its way into the final audit report. The fallibility of the CAG is a red herring.
Turning to the charge of ‘illegal advice’, the CAG did not give any legal advice on his own on the choice between administrative instructions and amendment of the Act; he was only citing an advice of the Law Ministry of 2006. It might be Mr. Gopal’s view that the advice was wrong, but I doubt if the Law Ministry would accept that view. The CAG’s point was that in July 2006, on the basis of the Law Ministry’s clear advice at that stage, competitive bidding could have been adopted through administrative instructions. Anyway, that is only a hypothetical point; the final decision was to amend the Act. The CAG did not question that decision. He merely pointed out that the time it took to arrive at that decision (for whatever reasons) meant the continuance of the procedure of selections by a Screening Committee. Further, he did not even criticise that procedure per se, but only the absence of openness, transparency and fairness in that procedure, and the difficulty of determining the basis for the selection of parties. What remains of the illegality charge?
Mr. Gopal makes another point, namely, that mining licences could be granted only by the State governments, and that the Screening Committee was just that, namely, a Screening Committee, and that it was making no allocations of coal blocks. I am sure the CAG will have something to say on this, but as a layman let me ask Mr. Gopal a few simple or simplistic questions. Why was there a Screening Committee at all? What was it screening for? If it was not making allocations of coal blocks, what exactly was it doing? If there was no such thing as ‘allocation of coal blocks’, why did no one say so when the draft audit report was under discussion between the Ministry and the CAG? Did the Ministry question the term ‘allocation of coal blocks’ at any time?
On all these matters, did it not occur to Mr. Gopal that he should take the precaution of checking with the Ministry and the CAG before publishing his rash remarks?
Tendentious
Mr. Gopal castigates the CAG for calculating “losses arising from obeying the law”. That is a highly tendentious statement. First, what the CAG is talking about is not ‘losses’ to the government, but windfall gains to the recipients of the allocations. Secondly, it is preposterous to say that the CAG is calculating ‘windfall gains’ as arising from the government following a legal course. His point is that the allocation of coal blocks confers windfall gains on the recipient parties, and so the process of selection of parties should be fair, objective and transparent. This would apply, whatever the route followed for the selection of parties.
As for Kapil Sibal’s criticism of the CAG for making policy (The Times of India, September 15, 2012), the answer is threefold. First, the CAG does not make policy prescriptions. He draws inferences from his audit findings and makes some consequential recommendations for the government’s consideration. It is for the government to consider and accept or reject them. Secondly, the CAG picks up policy decisions or recommendations from the files and tries to find out whether they were acted upon promptly or at all. Thirdly, where there is no recorded and reasoned policy decision behind the executive action, the CAG examines the rationale of the action. If there is a clear record of the reasoned adoption of a policy, the CAG does not and cannot question it.
Mr. Sibal also says that maximising revenues might not always be the government’s objective. True, but this should be a recorded ex ante decision, not an ex post facto rationalisation.
Again, the allocation of coal blocks is of course an executive decision, but would Mr. Sibal argue that the arbitrary and discretionary allocations of scarce natural resources are an executive prerogative that the CAG cannot question?
Disingenuous argument
Finally, there is the disingenuous argument that the executive is accountable whereas the CAG is not. The executive is of course accountable to Parliament and the people — through the CAG — though every attempt is made to evade it and obfuscate issues, as in the present case. As for the CAG, the argument is presumably that he should be accountable to the people for the quality of his audit. He is our supreme audit institution, and we cannot ask another auditor to second-guess his audit.
Besides, apart from the Ministries and other government organisations and public enterprises, even IITs, IIMs, private companies, etc, can come within the scope of his audit if they receive funds or allocations of natural resources from the state; and the CAG nominates private sector auditors for the audit of public enterprises and test-checks their audit. Which of these agencies or organisations can be asked to undertake an audit of the CAG’s work? In any case, such an imposition on the CAG would be unconstitutional.
All this agonising is unnecessary because the CAG is not exempt from criticism. (That is perhaps the understatement of the year, considering the campaign that is going on.) As already mentioned, the executive has plenty of opportunity to challenge every statement in the audit report at every stage, including the stage of examination by the PAC. Secondly, there is a discussion of all this in the media, and many commentators analyse the audit reports. Is this not a form of accountability?
If there is to be a peer review of the work of the institution of the CAG, it has to be initiated by the CAG himself. The CAG has in fact done so. He constituted an international panel consisting of representatives of the SAIs of several countries to conduct a review of his organisation’s work, and the panel is understood to have submitted its report.
In conclusion, it is sad that persons of such eminence should attack a constitutional functionary either on the basis of inadequate understanding or with the deliberate intention of obfuscating issues.
(Ramaswamy R. Iyer is a former Secretary, Water Resources, Government of India.)
Disturbing trends in judicial activism
JUDICIALREVIEW
Public Interest Litigation is a good thing when it is used to enforce the rights of the disadvantaged. But it has now been diluted to interfere with the power of the government to take decisions on a range of policy matters
Judicial activism is not an easy concept to define. It means different things to different persons. Critics denounce judicial decisions as activist when they do not agree with them. Activism, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder. In India, the opening up of access to courts to the poor, indigent and disadvantaged sections of the nation through Public Interest Litigation, popularly known by its acronym PIL, is unexceptionable judicial activism. From 1979, the judiciary led by the Supreme Court in India became relevant to the nation in a manner not contemplated by the makers of the Constitution and became an active participant in the dispenser of social justice.
It is a matter of concern that over the years this original, beneficial and unexceptionable character of the Court’s activism in PIL has been largely converted into a general supervisory jurisdiction to correct actions and policies of government, public bodies and authorities. This is a type of judicial activism unparalleled in any other judiciary.
For basic rights
PIL jurisdiction began haltingly with little idea of its potential when the Supreme Court, in 1979, entertained complaints by social activists drawing the attention of the Court to the conditions of certain sections of society or institutions which were deprived of their basic rights.
In 1979, Supreme Court advocate Kapila Hingorani drew the Court’s attention to a series of articles in a newspaper exposing the plight of Bihar undertrial prisoners, most of whom had served pretrial detention more than the period they could have been imprisoned if convicted. Sunil Batra, a prisoner, wrote a letter to Justice Krishna Iyer of the Supreme Court drawing his attention to torture by prison authorities and the miserable conditions of prisoners in jails. This was taken up as a petition and the Court passed orders for humane conditions in jails. In 1980, two professors of law wrote a letter to the editor of a newspaper describing the barbaric conditions of detention in the Agra Protective House for Women which was made the basis of a writ petition in the Supreme Court. The exploitation of workmen at construction sites in violation of labour laws was brought to the attention of the Supreme Court by a letter. The slave-like condition of bonded labourers in quarries was brought to the attention of the Court by a social activist organisation. A journalist moved the court against the evictions of pavement dwellers of Bombay. Several cases of this type followed.
In dealing with such cases, the Court evolved a new regime of rights of citizens and obligations of the State and devised new methods for its accountability. In 1982, Justice P.N. Bhagwati, correctly stated the purpose of PIL as it originated. He emphasised that PIL “a strategic arm of the legal aid movement which is intended to bring justice within the reach of the poor masses, who constitute the low visibility area of humanity, is a totally different kind of litigation from the ordinary traditional litigation.”
No longer were the Court’s clientele drawn from landlords, businessmen, corporations and affluent persons. With PIL, the common man, the disadvantaged and marginalised sections of society had also easy access to the Court with the help of social activists.
This unique judicial activism was not found in other countries and leading judges abroad such as Lord Harry Woolf of the United Kingdom and Justice Michael Kirby of Australia, applauded it.
The new intervention
However, over the years, the social action dimension of PIL has been diluted and eclipsed by another type of “public cause litigation” in courts. In this type of litigation, the court’s intervention is not sought for enforcing the rights of the disadvantaged or poor sections of the society but simply for correcting the actions or omissions of the executive or public officials or departments of government or public bodies. Examples of this type of intervention by the Court are innumerable. In the interest of preventing pollution, the Supreme Court ordered control over automobile emissions, air and noise and traffic pollution, gave orders for parking charges, wearing of helmets in cities, cleanliness in housing colonies, disposal of garbage, control of traffic in New Delhi, made compulsory the wearing of seat belts, ordered action plans to control and prevent the monkey menace in cities and towns, ordered measures to prevent accidents at unmanned railway level crossings, prevent ragging of college freshmen, for collection and storage in blood banks, and for control of loudspeakers and banning of fire crackers.
In recent orders, the Supreme Court has directed the most complex engineering of interlinking rivers in India. The Court has passed orders banning the pasting of black film on automobile windows. On its own, the Court has taken notice of Baba Ramdev being forcibly evicted from the Ramlila grounds by the Delhi Administration and censured it. The Court has ordered the exclusion of tourists in the core area of tiger reserves. All these managerial exercises by the Court are hung on the dubious jurisdictional peg of enforcing fundamental rights under Article 32 of the Constitution. In reality, no fundamental rights of individuals or any legal issues are at all involved in such cases. The Court is only moved for better governance and administration, which does not involve the exercise of any proper judicial function.
In its most activist and controversial interpretation of the Constitution, the Supreme Court took away the constitutionally conferred power of the President of India to appoint judges after consultation with the Chief Justice, and appropriated this power in the Chief Justice of India and a collegium of four judges. In no Constitution in the world is the power to select and appoint judges conferred on the judges themselves.
The Court is made the monitor of the conduct of investigating and prosecution agencies who are perceived to have failed or neglected to investigate and prosecute ministers and officials of government. Cases of this type are the investigation and prosecution of ministers and officials believed to be involved in the Jain Hawala case, the fodder scam involving the former Chief Minister of Bihar, Lalu Prasad Yadav, the Taj Corridor case involving the former Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Mayawati, and the recent prosecution of the Telecom Minister and officials in the 2G Telecom scam case by the Supreme Court.
Military operation
The Supreme Court has made an order even in a military operation. In 1993, the Court issued orders on the conduct of military operations in Hazratbal, Kashmir where the military had as a matter of strategy restricted the food supplies to hostages. The Court ordered that the provision of food of 1,200 calorific value should be supplied to hostages. Commenting on this, an Army General wrote: “For the first time in history, a Court of Law was asked to pronounce judgment on the conduct of an ongoing military operation. Its verdict materially affected the course of operation.”
Even proceedings of Legislatures are controlled by the Court. In the Jharkhand Legislative Assembly case, the Supreme Court ordered the Assembly to conduct a Motion of Confidence and ordered the Speaker to conduct proceedings according to a prescribed agenda and not to entertain any other business. Its proceedings were ordered to be recorded for reporting to the Court. These orders were made in spite of Article 212 of the Constitution which states that Courts are not to inquire into any proceedings of the legislature.
Other examples
Matters of policy of government are subject to the Court’s scrutiny. Distribution of food-grains to persons below poverty line was monitored, which even made the Prime Minister remind the Court that it was interfering with the complex food distribution policies of government. In the 2G Licenses case, the Court held that all public resources and assets are a matter of public trust and they can only be disposed of in a transparent manner by a public auction to the highest bidder. This has led to the President making a Reference to the Court for the Court’s legal advice under Article 143 of the Constitution. In the same case, the Court set aside the expert opinion of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) to sell 2G spectrum without auction to create greater teledensity in India.
The Court has for all practical purposes disregarded the separation of powers under the Constitution, and assumed a general supervisory function over other branches of governments. The temptation to rush to the Supreme Court and 21 High Courts for any grievance against a public authority has also deflected the primary responsibility of citizens themselves in a representative self government of making legislators and the executive responsible for their actions. The answer often given by the judiciary to this type of overreach is that it is compelled to take upon this task as the other branches of government have failed in their obligations. On this specious justification, the political branches of government may, by the same logic, take over the functions of the judiciary when it has failed, and there can be no doubt that there are many areas where the judiciary has failed to meet the expectations of the public by its inefficiency and areas of cases.
Justice Jackson of the U.S. has aptly said: “The doctrine of judicial activism which justifies easy and constant readiness to set aside decisions of other branches of Government is wholly incompatible with a faith in democracy and in so far it encourages a belief that judges should be left to correct the result of public indifference it is a vicious teaching.” Unless the parameters of PIL are strictly formulated by the Supreme Court and strictly observed, PIL which is so necessary in India, is in danger of becoming diffuse, unprincipled, encroaching into the functions of other branches of government and ineffective by its indiscriminate use.
(The writer is a senior advocate of the Supreme Court and former Solicitor General of India. This article is an abridged version of a lecture he recently delivered at the sesquicentennial of the Bombay High Court.)
Experts discuss ways to curb human trafficking- Judicial Colloquium held in Chandigarh
A Colloquium on human trafficking was organised on Sunday by the state legal services authorities of Punjab, Haryana and UT Chandigarh, in collaboration with the governments of Punjab and Haryana. The event was held at the Chandigarh Judicial Academy and was sponsored by the Union Ministry of Home Affairs.
Eminent speakers and chief guest, Jasbir Singh, Acting Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court, discussed concerns related to human trafficking and the possible ways to curb it. Speaking on the occasion, P M Nair, special Director General of CRPF, explained the dimensions, challenges and existing responses on human trafficking. He presented a documentary made by the United Nations, with him as the project head, featuring real life cases of children who were traded for money and appeals made by Bollywood actors like Amitabh Bachchan, John Abraham and Preity Zinta to stop human trafficking.
Shanta Sinha, Chairperson of the National Commission for Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) and Ravi Kant, President of Sakti Vahini, a Non Governmental Organisation, emphasized that the present legal framework against human trafficking has loopholes and more stringent laws need to be developed. Sinha said that about 80 percent of the present child labour force is employed in the agricultural sector as only 65 procedures are prohibited by the Child Labour Act in India. This leads to more trafficking of children for agricultural sector and work at home based units. Ravi Kant applauded the recent order passed by the Punjab and Haryana High Court to register FIRs for all missing children.
U Sarathchandran, member, Secretary of National Legal Services Authority, New Delhi, elucidated the role of the judiciary along with cases of human trafficking from Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, which were caught and duly handled by the judicial authorities. Justice Roshan Dalvi of Mumbai High Court and Swati Chauhan, Judge at the Family Court, Mumbai, threw light on the legal provisions against trafficking and protection of victims alongwith the prosecution of traffickers.
In his address, Acting Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High court, Jasbir Singh, said, “It is shameful that human beings are treated as commodities today. It’s a gross disruption in moral values and righteousness”. He added that in this regard there is a need to follow the principle of four Ps- prohibition, prevention, prosecution and partnership.
The colloquium was attended by a gathering of more than 500 jurists and other members of the judicial fraternity.
Lessons in judicial restraint
Supreme Court of India
JUSTICE MARKANDEY KATJU IN THE HINDU
In a democracy, the remedy for a malfunctioning legislature and executive must come from the people, not the judiciary
It is evident that the Pakistan Supreme Court has embarked on a perilous path of confrontation with the political authorities, which can only have disastrous consequences for the country. Recently its Chief Justice said that the Constitution, not Parliament, is supreme. This is undoubtedly settled law since the historical decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in Marbury vs. Madison (1803).
The grave problem, however, that courts are often faced with is this: on the one hand, the Constitution is the supreme law of the land and, on the other hand, in the garb of interpreting the Constitution, the court must not seek an unnecessary confrontation with the legislature, particularly since the legislature consists of representatives democratically elected by the people.
The solution was provided in the classical essay “The Origin and Scope of the American Doctrine of Constitutional Law” published in 1893 in the Harvard Law Review by James Bradley Thayer, Professor of Law at Harvard University. It elaborately discusses the doctrine of judicial restraint. Justices Holmes, Brandeis, and Frankfurter of the U.S. Supreme Court were followers of Prof. Thayer’s philosophy of judicial restraint. Justice Frankfurter referred to Thayer as “the great master of Constitutional Law,” and in a lecture at the Harvard Law School said: “If I were to name one piece of writing on American Constitutional Law, I would pick Thayer’s once famous essay, because it is a great guide for judges, and therefore the great guide for understanding by non-judges of what the place of the judiciary is in relation to constitutional questions.”
The court certainly has power to decide constitutional issues. However, as pointed out by Justice Frankfurter in West Virginia State Board of Education vs. Barnette 319 U.S. 624 (1943), since this great power can prevent the full play of the democratic process, it is vital that it should be exercised with rigorous self restraint.
Separation of powers
The philosophy behind the doctrine of judicial restraint is that there is broad separation of powers under the Constitution, and the three organs of the State, the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary, must respect each other, and must not ordinarily encroach into each other’s domain, otherwise the system cannot function properly. Also, the judiciary must realise that the legislature is a democratically elected body, which expresses the will of the people (however imperfectly) and in a democracy this will is not to be lightly frustrated or thwarted.
Apart from the above, as pointed out by Prof. Thayer, judicial over-activism deprives the people of “the political experience and the moral education and stimulus that comes from fighting the problems in the ordinary way, and correcting their own errors”.
In Asif Hameed vs. The State of J&K, AIR 1989 S.C. 1899 (paragraphs 17 to 19), the Indian Supreme Court observed: “Although the doctrine of separation of powers has not been recognised under the Constitution in its absolute rigidity, the Constitution makers have meticulously defined the functions of various organs of the State. The legislature, executive, and judiciary have to function within their own spheres demarcated in the Constitution. No organ can usurp the function of another. — While exercise of powers by the legislature and executive is subject to judicial restraint, the only check on our own exercise of power is the self imposed discipline of judicial restraint.”
Judicial restraint is particularly important for the Supreme Court for two reasons:
(1) Of the three organs of the state, only one, the judiciary, is empowered to declare the limits of jurisdiction of all three organs. This great power must therefore be exercised by the judiciary with the utmost humility and self restraint.
(2) The errors of the lower courts can be corrected by the higher courts, but there is none above the Supreme Court to correct its errors.
Some people justify judicial activism by saying that the legislature and executive are not properly performing their functions. The reply to this argument is that the same charge is often levelled against the judiciary. Should the legislature or the executive then take over judicial functions? If the legislature and the executive do not perform their functions properly, it is for the people to correct them by exercising their franchise properly, or by peaceful and lawful public meetings and demonstrations, and/or by public criticism through the media and by other lawful means. The remedy is not in the judiciary taking over these functions, because the judiciary has neither the expertise nor the resources to perform these functions.
In this connection I may quote from an article by Wallace Mendelson published in 31 Vanderbilt Law Review 71 (1978): “If, then, the Thayer tradition of judicial modesty is outmoded, if judicial aggression is to be the rule, as in the 1930s, some basic issues remain:
“First, how legitimate is government by Judges? Is anything beyond their reach? Will anything be left for ultimate resolution by the democratic process, for, what Thayer called ‘that wide margin of considerations which address themselves only to the practical judgment of a legislative body representing (as Courts do not) a wide range of mundane needs and aspirations?’
“Second, if the Supreme Court is to be the ultimate policy making body without accountability, how is it to avoid the corrupting effects of raw power? Also, can the Court satisfy the expectations it has aroused?
“Third, can nine men [the Supreme Court Judges] master the complexities of every phase of American life? Are any nine men wise enough and good enough to wield such power over the lives of millions? Are Courts institutionally equipped for such burdens? Unlike legislatures, they are not representative bodies reflecting a wide range of social interest. Lacking a professional staff of trained investigators, they must rely for data almost exclusively upon the partisan advocates who appear before them. Inadequate or misleading information invites unsound decisions.
“Finally, what kind of citizens will such a system of judicial activism produce, a system that trains us to look not to ourselves for the solution of our problems, but to the most elite among elites: nine Judges governing our lives without political or judicial accountability? Surely this is neither democracy nor the rule of law.”
In Marbury vs. Madison (1803), Chief Justice Marshal, while avoiding confrontation with the government of President Jefferson, upheld the supremacy of the Constitution. Another example is the very recent judgment of U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts in the Affordable Healthcare Act case, in which he basically followed the doctrine of judicial restraint.
In Divisional Manager, Aravali Golf Course vs. Chander Haas (2006) the Indian Supreme Court observed: “Judges must know their limits and not try to run the government. They must have modesty and humility and not behave like Emperors. There is broad separation of powers under the Constitution, and each of the organs of the state must have respect for the others and must not encroach into each other’s domain.” A similar view was taken in Government of Andhra Pradesh vs. P. Laxmi Devi.
New Deal legislation
A reference may usefully be made to the well known episode in the history of the U.S. Supreme Court when it dealt with the New Deal legislation initiated by President Franklin Roosevelt soon after he assumed office in 1933. When the overactive court kept striking down this legislation, President Roosevelt proposed to pack the court with six of his nominees. The threat was enough, and it was not necessary to carry it out. In 1937, the court changed its confrontationist attitude and started upholding the legislation (see West Coast Hotel Vs. Parrish). “Economic due process” met with a sudden demise.
The moral of this story is that if the judiciary does not maintain restraint and crosses its limits there will be a reaction which may do great damage to the judiciary, its independence, and its respect in society.
It is not my opinion that a judge should never be activist, but such activism should be done only in exceptional and rare cases, and ordinarily judges should exercise self restraint.
In Dennis vs. U.S. (1950), Justice Frankfurter observed: “Courts are not representative bodies. They are not designed to be a good reflex of a democratic society. Their essential quality is detachment, founded on independence. History teaches that the independence of the judiciary is jeopardised when Courts become embroiled in the passions of the day, and assume primary responsibility in choosing between competing political, economic, and social pressures”.
The Pakistan Supreme Court would be well advised to heed these words of wisdom, even at such a late stage.
(Justice Markandey Katju is chairman of the Press Council of India.)
Judicial propriety in an age of scandal
Judicial propriety in an age of scandal
Why Justice Dalveer Bhandari‘s election to the International Court of Justice while serving as a judge of the Supreme Court of India is an unhealthy development
Justice Dalveer Bhandari, a judge of the Supreme Court of India, was elected a fortnight ago by the United Nations General Assembly and Security Council, to serve as a Member of the International Court of Justice (ICJ). He defeated the Filipino nominee, Justice Florentino Feliciano, by a handsome margin and now has a six-year first term at the World Court. Justice Bhandari is undoubtedly a fine judge with considerable expertise in international law. His legal acumen, keen intellect and a sense of justice, especially for the poor and homeless that shines through in his domestic judgments, are qualities that make him an ideal representative of India, itself a beacon of democracy and human rights in the developing world. That India has made a good choice is not in doubt; whether it could have made a better choice, as some have suggested, is contestable though ultimately a moot point. The key issue that arises in this context relates to the fact that Justice Bhandari’s nomination by the Government of India and eventual election to the ICJ took place while he continued to serve as a judge of the Supreme Court of India. This raises grave and disturbing issues regarding the independence of the judiciary in India and points to the lowered standards of propriety in the highest echelons of governance.
Judiciary & government
The independence of the judiciary is a significant legal principle in India, ever since it was held to be part of the basic structure of the Constitution. Since then it has been used on several occasions by the Supreme Court most notably to judicially lay down norms regarding the appointment of judges, transfer of judges between High Courts and administratively with regard to claiming exemption for the office of the Chief Justice of India from the purview of the Right to Information Act and formulating an internal code of conduct for appropriate judicial behaviour. The extensive (and sometimes unwarranted) usage of judicial independence as a legal principle has however blighted its primary status as a normative principle of good governance which promotes impartiality, a key facet of fair adjudication. The judiciary must not only be independent of the co-ordinate wings of government as well as the parties before the case, but must also be seen to be so. The slightest doubt in the public mind of excessive proximity between the judiciary and the government, which is the largest litigant before it, may lead to significant apprehensions of a lack of impartiality thereby questioning the legitimacy of the entire adjudicatory setup. As the Supreme Court of India itself likes repeating in its judgments, “Judges, like Caesar’s wife, must be above suspicion.”
It is this test of judicial independence as a normative principle that Justice Bhandari’s actions fail to satisfy. From available records, Justice Bhandari’s candidacy was accepted by the Ministry of External Affairs after a recommendation to this effect in January 2012 by the Indian Chapter of the Permanent Council of Arbitration, whose advice in this matter, the government has traditionally honoured. From that time, up to the election at the United Nations in April, Justice Bhandari continued as a serving Supreme Court judge, hearing cases (from the Supreme Court causelist record, he heard cases till the 9th of April) and being party to delivered judgments (the last recorded judgment thus far being delivered on the 27th of April, authored by Justice Dipak Misra, his brother Judge on the Bench).
Though his resignation is not a matter of public record yet (the website of the Supreme Court continues to show him as a serving judge at the time of writing of this piece), it is believed that it became effective only on his election to the ICJ. During the same time, as the Ministry of External Affairs’ response to a RTI petition on 8th February 2012 shows, the government was actively lobbying for his candidature in the United Nations, speaking on his behalf to various member states. Even if it is assumed that Justice Bhandari had little or no contact with the government in this process, the very fact that the government, a regular litigant in Justice Bhandari’s courtroom was actively espousing his cause outside it, is gravely problematic in terms of judicial independence conceptualised as a principle of good governance leading to impartiality.
Unheeded lessons from the past
It is not however the case that Justice Bhandari’s failure to resign as a judge of the Supreme Court prior to the government making him its official nominee for election to the ICJ is an isolated incident of judicial independence being imperilled at the altar of individual ambition. Justice Subba Rao’s acceptance of his candidature for President of India by the opposition parties when he was Chief Justice of India is the most egregious example of the independence of the judiciary being threatened by a single individual. Equally pertinently in the present context, the election of the last Indian to serve on the ICJ, the then Chief Justice of India, R.S. Pathak (who incidentally relinquished office as Chief Justice only subsequent to his election to the ICJ), was marred by strong claims that Justice Pathak’s appointment was part of a quid pro quo involving Union Carbide Corporation, the Government of India and the Supreme Court with the Pathak Court endorsing a deeply flawed settlement in the aftermath of the Bhopal gas tragedy. It is disappointing that Justice Bhandari as an upright individual and a learned judge failed to pay adequate heed to these lessons of history and relinquish his judicial office before accepting a nomination by the Government of India.
What is equally disappointing is the lack of public outcry regarding this issue. When Justice Subba Rao accepted the candidature for President made to him by the opposition parties while still in office, a man no less than Motilal Setalvad, India’s first Attorney General, issued a statement to the press strongly condemning the Chief Justice’s decision, saying that “he has set at naught traditions which have governed the judiciary in our country for over a century.” Justice Pathak’s nomination to the ICJ was the subject of several scathing indictments, including by former Supreme Court judge, Justice Krishna Iyer who wrote of “the beholdenness of the candidate [Pathak] to the litigant government for getting the great office for him.” As far as Justice Bhandari’s nomination is concerned, except a public interest petition challenging it as a violation of judicial independence, there has been a seemingly all-pervading public silence. Even the petition itself, though well-intentioned, was misguided, seeking redress from the Supreme Court in a matter which was characterised by impropriety rather than illegality of a type a judicial order could rectify. Justifiably, the Court refused to entertain it.
Importance of propriety
In an age of multi-billion rupee scandals, endemic corruption and food shortages caused by governmental apathy and inaction, the impropriety of a judge failing to resign at an appropriate time may intuitively seem trivial. But as with most questions of impropriety, though its effects may not be immediately apparent, they are the portents of an insidious decline in the standards and values that define institutions.
For the Supreme Court of India, judicial independence has been the cornerstone of its functioning from the time of its inception. Despite a few challenging periods, the Court, the Bar and the conscientious members of the political classes have always striven to fiercely guard the independence of the judiciary from any potential threats. The Bhandari episode is however a bellwether of a possibly developing relationship of cosiness between government and the judiciary, accompanied by a general public indifference, bordering on acquiescence, of such a relationship.
The government’s decision to nominate a sitting judge before whom it continued to appear as a litigant, Justice Bhandari’s decision to not resign when the government was lobbying for him, and most crucially public acceptance of such an unholy nexus are warning signs that ought to be heeded. While the return of an Indian to the World Court after an absence of two decades rightfully gives cause for celebration, it provides an equally significant opportunity for introspection, that the cherished principle of judicial independence, responsible in the first place for the high esteem in which the Indian judiciary and its judges are held on the world stage, does not itself fall into desuetude in the process.
(Arghya Sengupta is a Stipendiary Lecturer in Administrative Law at the University of Oxford and the founder of the think-tank, The Pre-Legislative Briefing Service.)
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Warding Off The Eye
MEDIA VS SUPREME COURT
- A PIL in Feb alleged that CJI Kapadia had a conflict of interest in the Vodafone tax case. It was dismissed; a penalty was imposed.
- Advocate Harish Salve says he was misquoted in the Vodafone matter. Eligibility criterion spelt out for court reporters.
- In Mar, CJI says reports on the disproportionate assets of ex-CJI K.G. Balakrishnan are upsetting
- SC hurt by reports of a judge listing her daughters in ‘liabilities’
- Advocate Fali Nariman says a confidential exchange between his client Sahara and SEBI was leaked on TV. CJI directs parties to make submission in the matter.
- Court expresses concern over how the media reported on events surrounding the murder of Arushi Talwar and on her personal life
***
Over the last couple of days, two pillars of democracy have decided that the media must be kept on a leash. First, the Lok Sabha secretariat declared that the media would not be allowed in the vicinity of parliamentary standing and joint committee meetings. Reporters usually hang about for informal briefings from MP acquaintances—it’s the life-breath of in-depth coverage of Parliament. Media professionals wonder if the unprecedented order is timed to prevent reporting on the three defence chiefs’ appearance before a parliamentary committee, slated for April 20. Second, the Allahabad High Court prohibited the media from writing or reporting further on the sensational news of troop movements towards Delhi on Jan 16-17. The Union i&b ministry followed up with an advisory seeking strict adherence to the court order. The two restrictions come even as the Supreme Court is mulling guidelines for law reporters covering it.
So, is this the system recoiling at all those big news stories of scams and criminal investigations that have come out recently? Media professionals feel these ‘guidelines’ would end up stifling them. The bigger fear is that, when institutions like the Supreme Court and the Lok Sabha start writing rulebooks for the media, they might prompt others—say the bureaucracy and the police—to do so too. The cascading effect could shrink the space of reporting in the same proportion as RTI added to it.
It was in the backdrop of an information explosion triggered by television channels, where opinions were sought and decisions arrived at swiftly, that the Law Commission finalised its 2006 report, ‘Trial by Media’, framing guidelines for reporting on criminal proceedings in court. The report makes a case for not covering a trial till it is concluded. It is learnt the Centre is in active consultation with the states on the commission’s report.
As the five-judge constitution bench under the Chief Justice of India, S.H. Kapadia, engages in a threadbare discussion on the media with advocates of freedom of the press and others, it is perhaps time to ask, as indeed the court is doing, whether guidelines regulating the media are required at all. In fact, is there any reason to suppose that media coverage has led to miscarriage of justice. And have existing guidelines failed? Linked to both questions is the public’s right to know and be informed.
Already, there are quite a few guidelines to begin with. There’s the Press Council Act of 1979, though its powers could be debated. Presided over by a retired judge and with journalists and newspapers’ representatives on the board, the council has the power to censure, warn and admonish the press if it fails to adhere to the guidelines. Its present head, Justice Markandeya Katju, has called the Allahabad High Court’s gag order “not correct” and said that “the media has a fundamental right to make such a publication, as it did not endanger national security”.
Then, there’s the News Broadcasting Authority of India (NBA), a self-regulatory body of broadcasters with academics, eminent persons and a former CJI on its rolls. It has a detailed programme code, advocates voluntary adherence and imposes penalties. After the 28/11 attack on Mumbai, it had drawn up rules for reportage by the electronic media.
In his capacity as chairperson of NBA, which is a party to the SC’s deliberations guidelines for the media, former CJI J.S. Verma says, “I feel that, as there are already guidelines drawn up by the channels themselves, the bench in my view could suggest modifications if it so wished. In fact, if the judiciary says compliance with existing guidelines is desirable, that itself will have the desired effect.” Verma—who is often openly critical of media reports—thinks peer pressure works better than imposed guidelines.
Other senior lawyers hold the view that the court has no power to make laws. Former SC judge Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer calls the SC’s attempt to regulate the media a case of judicial overreach. “It’s Parliament that has the right to legislate, not the court.”
Though the chief justice of India has repeatedly clarified that the aim is to regulate, not control, these recent exercises are seen as part of an overall process to control a media that is seen as increasingly critical and combative. The judiciary and the media, which appeared to be working in tandem at one point, now appear to have fallen out.
Does the public have a right to know about how justice is delivered? And if it does, how will that happen if reporters are not permitted to report? Such a move would also run against the open court proceedings our judiciary has adopted till now. There are many who suggest that instead of a broad arc of guidelines, what is required is a case-to-case examination. If an error takes place due to the media, there are adequate grievance redressal structures within the courts in the form of contempt and defamation laws. Moreover, journalists enjoys no special immunities or privileges by law.
Says Kumar Ketkar, editor of Divya Bhaskar, “I am quite critical of the media, but I feel the Supreme Court is overstepping its brief in wanting to frame guidelines for court reporting as the move creates an impression that the court alone is the upholder of integrity, sovereignty and the national interest. This is unfortunate. It would also appear that court and the media are in direct confrontation with each other.”
Adds Arnab Goswami, head of Time Now, “If everything now becomes a matter of litigation, there will be nothing to report on. What will we report on?”
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Supreme but not infallible
Supreme Court of India
“Journalists like to believe…that all constitutional rights depend on the right to know and the right to know depends on a free press”—Benjamin C. Bradlee, editor of The Washington Post, 2 June 1974. Constitutional battles are usually delicious if you’re a geeky spectator of parliamentarians, policy wonks and jurists. It’s not fun to be one of the embattled sides in an unfair fight.
The battle is unfair because the media is being forced to fight against the judiciary on the latter’s turf. A constitutional bench of five judges in the Supreme Court of India has set out to create a framework for the press to report on the judiciary and its proceedings. The press, unlike Parliament or the executive, has no further remedy once it gets tied down by the Supreme Court. Through Indian constitutional history, the court has been the custodian of free speech and, indirectly, of an uncurtailed and robust press. As it stands, the protector is threatening to limit our rights. Given that the court’s verdict is bound to affect the way people like me carry out our trade, I’m not pleased about the scenario in the least, especially since so much that needs to be said on our behalf is not even coming before the bench.
Yes, journalists are being represented in the case—Rajeev Dhavan has argued for the Editors’ Guild of India and the Forum for Media Professionals, Anil Divan represented The Hindu and Prashant Bhushan argued for Siddharth Varadarajan, editor of The Hindu. Other bodies such as the self-regulatory body for 46 television channels, News Broadcasters Association, the Indian Newspapers Society and the Press Council of India are being heard by the court.
I don’t blame the judges for not understanding the nuances involving journalistic craft. They are judges, not journalists. If it were so easy to understand how reporters, editors and newsrooms worked, there would be no such confrontation between the two sides. And the same is true of the media—few people in newsrooms really understand how the judiciary works.
The language of both the professions also causes mutual tension. To a journalist sitting on a newsdesk, the words “suit” and “petition” are interchangeable, and a headline writer is more likely to use the former because it fits in a smaller space. To lawyers and judges, the gulf between a judge’s quote in a news story suffixed with “said the judge” and “observed the court” is massive. The former might well be an order or directive, while the latter could merely form part of the debate between the bar and the bench. After all, judges must throw searching questions at lawyers in order to properly excavate the points of dispute. The line of questioning, while it is a good indication, doesn’t necessarily mean that the court will eventually rule in that direction.
If you read multiple newspaper reports of the same court case and compare them, they might seem like accounts from different hearings. This is because daily hearings go on for hours, more so in appellate courts. A journalist will have only a few hundred words, or a few minutes of airtime, to tell a story. Obviously the newsiest details must make it to the top—the inverted pyramid rule. And this is not usually the most crucial legal argument being propounded in a case.
Eventually, lawyers think court reporters have done a bad job. The challenge is to succinctly summarize the proceedings. Different newspapers and television channels have varying styles of presenting news.
To most journalists, especially those who don’t normally report court-related news, when a lawyer opens his mouth, all that comes out is legalese.
To be sure, the judges may decide after the hearings are completed not to do anything that may be seen to be muzzling press freedom. The Supreme Court has also clarified that the ongoing constitutional bench hearings dealing with media coverage of sub judice cases will be restricted to questions of law related only to this aspect.
But we must ask the questions since it is germane to the arguments before the court: Is the Supreme Court’s constitutional bench the right forum to resolve bad journalism that emanates from our courts? Do the judges and lawyers appearing before them have the necessary expertise to deal with the myriad issues at hand, especially if they are not of a litigious nature? Does the court have the power to tell the media how it might report judicial proceedings?
What’s happening isn’t new. There have been similar breakdowns between the courts and the press elsewhere.
In March 1975, the top jurists, lawyers, editors, reporters, government officials and other stakeholders in the US came together in what has come to be known as the Washington Conference. Both sides “tested the high ground of principle against the erosive force of real world legal and journalistic practice, agreed to disagree, sometimes even agreed, and learned more about each other than was previously known,” reads a brief preview to the discussions at the conference. Jurists and journalists sat together and while mutually devising solutions, respected each other’s domain.
In 2009, a committee of judges and journalists in the UK decided how reportage would be conducted in the criminal courts.
Dhavan has already submitted to the Indian Supreme Court that a similar joint committee of members from the press and the judiciary would be the best way out of the woods we now find ourselves in. After all, there is no defending bad journalism.
Respond to this column at nikhil.k@livemint.com
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