Judicial independence sacrosanct
Jagdish N Singh
Supreme Court of India
Judicial independence is part of India’s Constitution’s
inalienable basic structure . No Government can
afford to do away with this. The Modi government did
well last month to clear the elevation of then
Uttarakhand High Court Chief Justice Justice K M Joseph
to the Supreme Court.
Knowledgeable sources say the Centre had no option
but yield in once the collegium reiterated its original
recommendation. It should have okayed Justice Joseph’s
case seven months earlier, when the five-member
Supreme Court collegium recommended it first .Law
Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad wrote to Chief Justice of
India Dipak Misra on April 30 this year and asked the
collegium to reconsider Justice Joseph’s name. Prasad
argued that his parent High Court — the Kerala High
Court — had adequate representation in the higher
judiciary.
The Minister wrote ,“The proposed appointment of
K.M. Joseph as a judge of the Supreme Court at this stage
does not appear to be appropriate… It would also not be
fair and justified to other more senior, suitable and
deserving Chief Justices and senior judges of various High
Courts.”
The Centre’s approach in the matter of Joseph’s
appointment has done considerable damage to the
image of the Modi Government . The impression has
gained ground that the Centre was being biased against
Justice Joseph as he was on a Bench that quashed the
imposition of President’s Rule in Uttarakhand in 2016.
The Government must now evolve some rational
procedure in the matter of high judicial appointments .It
must not selectively be approving some proposals from
the collegium and holding back or returning others. This
tends to alter also the inter se seniority among sitting
judges. This affects in determining who would first join
the collegium and become India’s Chief Justice.
The Centre can seek reconsideration of any name. But
in that case, it must explicitly state its rationale .
The
reiteration of a collegium recommendation must be
made binding. The Centre has not been consistent on this
count. Recently, it returned a recommendation
concerning two appointments to the Allahabad High
Court for the second time. Also, the Centre must not be
sitting on files without taking a decision one way or
another, particularly given the backlog of cases in the
Supreme Court.
Adultery law archaic
Dipak Misra
Ours is an age of science and reason .A product of this
age ,our Constitution guarantees all citizens the right to
equality irrespective of their gender. But what about our
penal code in the case of adultery ? It treats different
persons differently in cases of adultery .
According to Section 497 of the Indian Penal Code,
a man can be punished up to five years in jail if he has
sexual intercourse with another man’s wife. But a man will
not be committing any offence if he does so with the
“consent or connivance” of the husband of the woman
concerned.
This is strange. How can
a crime in one case not be
so in another ? The other
day a five-judge
Constitution bench, headed
by Chief Justice Dipak
Misra, rightly observed,
“When a woman is treated
as chattel(a personal
possession of the
conniving husband) , her right to dignity is affected.” Chief Justice Misra observed that jail term in the adultery case
does not appeal to common sense . He said, “If a third
party attacks or molests the wife of another, it amounts to
rape. Rape is an offence. But if a relationship is carried with
the consent of the woman, how does it amount to an
offence? If there is consent [between two adults], why
punish the wife’s lover?”
An argument in favour of the retention of the existing
adultery law goes that as it ensures the sanctity of the
marriage and is for public good. To this the CJI rightly said,
“Protecting marriage is the responsibility of the couple
involved. If one of them fails, there is a civil remedy
available to the other. Where is the question of public good
in a broken marriage.”
Playing to the galler y
Mamata Banerjee
Strange are the ways of
our politicians . Today
Bengal chief minister
Mamata Banerjee is a
fierce critic of the Assam’s
citizens’ list and the
Centre’s plans for a
crackdown against illegal
Bangladeshi immigrants. She has predicted a civil
war and bloodbath if the Centre stays the course.
As an Opposition lawmaker at the Centre the same Banerjee stated in the Lok Sabha on August 4,
2005: “The infiltration in Bengal has become a
disaster now... I have both the Bangladeshi & the
Indian voters list. This is a very serious matter. "
She had moved a motion discuss this matter.
When it was turned down by then Speaker Somnath
Chatterjee, she accused him of bias and hurled a
sheaf of papers at Chatterjee's deputy Charanjit
Singh Atwal, who was the presiding officer. Is
Banerjee playing to the gallery and eying a certain
vote bank in Bengal today ?
Factionalism in British politics
Boris Johnson
All is not well in the politics of the United Kingdom
today. One report goes that the Labour Party is facing
criticism over its treatment of anti-Semitism within its
ranks. The Conservative Party’s Oxford-educated former
British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson recently described
the burka as “oppressive and ridiculous.” He compared
women who wore them to “letter boxes”.
Johnson’s comments on burka have provoked anger
from both Muslim and non-Muslim members of the
Conservative Party. Conservative Member of Parliament
Dominic Grieve has even suggested he would leave the
party should the former become
its leader.
The report says that there was
a meeting in Parliament attended
by Tapan Ghosh, the leader of the
Hindu Samhati, last year. The
Muslim Council of Britain has
viewed it as a “wider problem” of
Islamophobia within the
Conservative Party as the room had been booked through
the office of a Conservative MP.
Hunger in Yemen
Ours in age of democracy. Does our diplomacy
care for democracy ? Hardly. In the tussle between
the (US-backed) military intervention led by Saudi
Arabia and the Iran- backed Shia Houthi rebels in
Yemen ordinary people alone are suffering .
According to a report, the tussle has destroyed
public infrastructure, killed thousands of civilians,
displaced hundreds of thousands more and blocked
food and aid supplies to major cities . Yemen’s 28
million people are practically abandoned today .
In
recent years, the country had an unprecedented
cholera outbreak . It killed over 2,000 people. The
health-care system has collapsed in Yemen. Millions
of people have been cut off from regular access to
clean water. More than eight million people are
threatened by acute hunger.
All eyes on Khan
Imran Khan
Pakistan is now under the political command of its
new Prime Minster Imran Khan. All eyes are on him at
home and abroad . In his parliamentary election victory
speech last month, he vowed to make a ‘Naya (new)
Pakistan,’ not to live in “a lavish house ( the official
Prime Minister
House)” and
make the country
his “leader Quaidi
- A z a m
Muhammad Ali
Jinnah had
dreamed of.”
I hope Khan
will keep his
promise . In his
first Presidential
Address (August
11, 1947) to the
C o n s t i t u e n t
Assembly of
Pakistan, Jinnah
commanded the government must “maintain law and
order” end “bribery and corruption,” and “concentrate
on the well-being of the people, especially of the
masses and the poor.”
Nawaz Sharif
Jinnah had declared, “You are free; you are free to go
to your temples, you are free to go to your mosques or
to any other place or worship in this State of Pakistan.
You may belong to any religion or caste or creed ...
there is no discrimination, no distinction between one
community and another, no discrimination between
one caste or creed and another… we are all citizens,
and equal citizens, of one State.”
Pakistan has so far been far off such ideals of
Jinnah . Its rulers in general have been too corrupt to
care for their
masses. The rich
have gone richer
and the poor
poorer in the
country.
The
plight of Pakistan’s
minorities -
Hindus, Sikhs,
Christians, Baha’i,
B u d d h i s t s ,
Zoroastrians
( P a r s i s ) ,
Ahmadiyas, Shi’ites and Mohajirs – has gone from bad
to worse. The country has become a den of radical
Islamist terrorists out to destroy peace and harmony at home and abroad.
Atal Bihari Vajpayee
Observers say
Khan can do little on
the social front. He
has been a supporter
of Pakistan’s
blasphemy law. Khan
can do little also in
improving ties
between New Delhi
and Islamabad.
Pakistan’s security
and foreign policy
happens to be the
exclusive domain of its military command or what is
known as Pakistan’s deep state, the Army and the Inter-
Services Intelligence. Khan will have to follow its
dictates.
Khan’s approach
to India can be
discerned in his
victory speech itself.
Herein he focused
on resolving the
Kashmir issue in
accordance with the
UN resolutions. New
Delhi considers the
UN resolutions are
irrelevant after the
Shimla Accord.
Narendra Modi
Khan must be
aware of what the
deep state did to
Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif after the latter moved
closer to India’s former Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee in the nineties. Khan must be aware also of
what all the military command did to Sharif again in the
recent years after the latter started 'hobnobbing' with
India's current Prime Minister Narendra Modi and
calling for the Pakistani extremists involved in the
Mumbai terror attack of 2008 to be brought to justice
by the Pakistani courts.
The observers add Khan is highly unlikely to
question the deep state on any front. He owes his
electoral victory to it. But for its covert manipulation,
the mighty Nawaz Sharif might not have been
marginalized in the recent election. Besides, Khan’s
Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaf (PTI) party does not have an
absolute majority in Parliament. It will be dependent
upon independents and smaller parties. And these
parties will listen only to the military command.