Death of the rule of law

“When historians in future look back at the last 6 years to see how democracy has been destroyed in India even without a formal Emergency, they will particularly mark the role of the Supreme Court in this destruction, & more particularly the role of the last 4 CJIs” tweeted by Prashant Bhushan on June 27, 2020.

The Court is seen as the last resort when all the gates of Justice are shut for the public, but what happens when that last ray of hope shatters all our faith in the system and in the Judiciary. Post 2014 elections, the Indian Judiciary has seen a considerable shift in the way it gives a verdict. During this period, the court has failed to perform its constitutional role. Let’s go through the failures of our judicial system during this period-

Judicial Appointments

After coming to power, the NDA government sought to establish as who will get to call the final shots on the judicial appointments. The government brought in an amendment to the Constitution to create ‘National Judicial Appointments Commission’(NJAC), but it was rejected by the constitution bench. The Central government interfered in the Collegium recommendations regarding judges’ appointments and transfers, leading to a spike in unfilled vacancies in high courts across the country.

In 2016, CJI T.S. Thakur criticized and made emotional appeal to the government to act promptly on judicial appointments. This was followed by controversial transfers of Justice Rajeev Shakdher, Justice Jayant Patel and Justice A.M. Kureshi.

Sahara-Birla Case

The case that launched the first corruption investigation into Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

In 2013, IT raids were conducted on the offices of Aditya birla Group and Sahara India Group and the officials retrieved evidence against PM Modi. They found evidence of Birla and Sahara group bribing crores of money to PM Modi and other notable ministers. On January 11, 2017, Justices Arun Mishra and Amitava Roy of the Supreme Court dismissed interim appeals seeking investigation into the Birla- Sahara case. And soon the case got dismissed and no media or television covered this news. Still many of us are not aware of it.

Loya Case

Similar thing happened in the Loya case too, which was equally controversial with high political stakes. The case pertained to suspicions raised about the death of CBI judge B.H. Loya, who was hearing the Sohrabuddin encounter case in which BJP chief Amit Shah faced conspiracy allegations.

The court dismissed all petitions seeking probe into the murder of Loya case, concluding that he died of natural causes.

Rafale Case

There were corruption allegations against government and Reliance as offset partner. It stated that per aircraft cost was escalated to 1570 crore from 536 crore.

On 14 December 2018, the court dismissed all the petitions seeking a probe into the alleged irregularities in the deal, and gave a clean chit to the Union government on all the three aspects, viz., the decision making, pricing and selection of Indian offset partner.

Demonetization

When demonetization was announced in 2016, several petitions were filed in SC challenging the decision.The petitions had raised substantial legal points such as whether the decision was unilaterally announced by the Government without the proper consultation of RBI Board. The SC agreed to examine the decision but no proper hearing took place.

National Register of Citizens (NRC)

The SC bench directed and oversaw the implementation of National Register of Citizens (NRC) in Assam since December 2014 until its finalization in August 2019. This demanded to drive undocumented citizens out of Assam. The NRC left out 19.06 lakh people.

Ayodhya Verdict

In November 2019, a bench led by CJI Gogoi sought to end a decades-old dispute over the ownership of a plot in Ayodhya. In its unanimous judgement, the disputed land was allotted for the construction of Ram Mandir while an alternative five acre land was allotted for building Mosque.

Just like all these verdicts, the SC did not challenge the Modi government policies, and rarely listed them for hearing. These include hugely controversial matters like changes made to constitutional status of Kashmir, Farm laws, reservation quotas for economically weaker sections, and the use of the opaque electoral bonds for funding political parties.

Hundreds of habeas corpus petitions challenging allegedly illegal detentions in Kashmir have been pending for more than a year without being decided. People of all hues, including students, political rivals, journalists, social activists, members of the civil society, and farmers who spoke, wrote or staged dharnas against the government and its policies were arrested on trumped-up charges of sedition, or under the UAPA Act.

Former Chief Justice of India (CJI) Justice Ranjan Gogoi took oath as a Rajya Sabha member amidst protests and walkout by Opposition parties. The CJI works independently and post retirement should not accept any position in the government, its a scar on the independence of the judiciary.

All the verdicts given by the Supreme court shows us that our democracy and freedom of speech is in danger. If the only hope for people’s justice gets biased, where will the common man go and whose door will it knock to get justice. This is slow death of our democracy, law and order.