13 July 2019
The only way one can look at Supreme Court proceedings in context of our politics is how and why repeated the matters are heard without imposing prohibitive costs on those parties, mostly the Union Government that wastes the time of the Courts, just because it is politically expedient. If one looks at the pile of cases pending dates and court time availability, matters of other clients queued up would and should need a compensating system from the Government, from vested parties that harass the Supreme Court.Clearly the only cases where courts tend to take themselves seriously is apparently when they hold others in contempt, where they manage to accommodate their rosters and allot hearings and are satisfied with apologies in sworn affidavits, the case in point is the latest one involving Mr Rahul. Otherwise in matters which have reached the Supreme Court itself, the courts have chosen to refer matters back to the Tribunals or lower jurisprudence in a manner that is as consistent as the weather.Why would the Vacation Bench impose restrictions on the Puducherry Government after the appeal was filed against a Madras HC judgement in the case of functioning of the Lt Governor? Firstly that single judge’s reasoning went by the defined parameters of judicial parallelism, where the decision of a Constitutional Bench on the matters of Governor and Union of India versus the State Government of NCR Delhi were settled. In that judgement, while accepting the uniqueness of the Delhi security apparatus where the Delhi Police came directly under the MHA, the judicial review held that there was no reason to upend the primacy that Constitution conferred to elected offices in contradistinction to unelected appointees. So the Lt Governor was bound to go by the advice rendered to the office by the duly elected Cabinet of Delhi Government headed by the duly elected CM of Delhi. After all, this row between powers and their separation created such a logjam in the working of the Aam Admi Party government of Mr Arvind Kejriwal and the Lt Governor of Delhi, it created controversies including unsavoury incidents where bureaucrats refused work, fracas involving secretaries and the ministers in the official premises of the Delhi government took place, lowering the prestige of our democracy and producing tamasha that became the staple of many an evening News Hour Debate!We little realise how costly our democracy is, and that when it has good intentioned leadership of political nature and an efficient bureaucracy to back it, the costs are much more when it gets dysfunctional over what are matters that should have been ‘settled’ in the first decade of such a system coming into force. Union Territories of Puducherry, New Delhi, Arunachal Pradesh, Goa were granted two sets of dispensations- ones with full statehood, the others with local assemblies and Lt Governors. But these were not created in 2014, that we should have problems regarding their working in the now! It shows systemic weakness of a kind that is reflective of inherent weaknesses, of individualism in contrast to institutionalism, and immaturity of the system.So it seems very silly for the judicial time of this country to be wasted by queuing up in the manner they have done with Puducherry now. After all, when Delhi was being resolved, could not the Supreme Court have foreseen with the help of the Law Officers of the Court that Puducherry too was covered by similar circumstances with some differences pertaining to policing control? Then why should the Vacation Bench entertain the plea of the Puducherry Lt Governor, grant an interim relief to the appellant of status quo ante, only for the regular bench headed by the CJI himself to observe that the appeal was premature, for the order was of a single judge of the Madras HC, and hence an appeal lay within that High Court itself before a Division Bench in the first instance!So the government of Mr Narayanaswamy which is the one at the receiving end of Ms Kiran Bedi’s intrusive governorship and which won reprieve now from the SC will still be subject to the Lt Governor’s whimsical approach as she prosecutes her appeal across the Madras High Court and if that appeal is not decided in favour of the Lt Governor or the State Government, it would then go back to the Supreme Court!Does India really have that kind of luxury to do these judicial rigmaroles on matters of governance? In a country where Development Indices are sub Saharan for comparison mostly, where leakages in administering the state are ubiquitous and have now attained a logic of their own that a State Chief Minister can openly talk about ‘cut money’, ( as Ms Mamata did in West Bengal) where a scam was unearthed in the Swacch Bharat Scheme for building toilets in Mission Mode as in Bihar where ₹ 15 crores was found siphoned off in lieu of 1.5 lakh toilets built only on paper, can we really have this drag of ambiguity in administrative authority for matters of state!In a system that seeks accountability unto itself, the Vacation Bench would not have even heard the matter, nor would the Madras High Court admitted the petition in the first case. A direction would have been given to examine the situation in light of the Delhi Government Judgement by the Supreme Court itself Suo Moto. Mutatis mutandis!The objective of the judicial system should be to ensure justice as seen to be done. The majesty of law cannot be circumcised by such niceties of instances, notices, parties and moot enough to say that justice cannot be after the fact, taking regard to others similarly situated. The Goddess of Justice is not a mother who will offer milk to only the baby that cries loudest for it…
indiarubberman.com 