Suo-moto action in Judiciary, its message
By: Amit Bhushan Date: 31st Aug. 2019
The internal disconnects and distortions in Judiciary, which holds power to distribute justice is on rise. This should not be taken as an act of mere one-upmanship within Judiciary. The fact is that some people within the system and who are an integral part of it are speaking out at the manner and quality of justice delivery, should be taken as a wake-up call by the members of Judiciary. This should be seen as tong-bells ringing to self-correct as the Judiciary’s is responsible to not only take decisions while maintaining equanimity across all litigants and sparring parties, but the same should also ‘appear to be made’ while maintaining such equanimity; to one and all. It may be noted that principles for such decision-making are rather well-known, however they need to be re-freshed and a push made for reiterating and implementing these is required from time to time. If such push isn’t made and criticism is attempted to be brushed under the carpet on some occasions and litigants/aggrieved parties stared at on other times, then we may be setting stage for ‘other wings’ in the government to take initiatives for making ‘Changes in Judiciary’ and whether these can be trusted with such changes may be in doubt as of yet.
In democratic societies, one of the primary role of the state is to fulfill responsibility of ensuring delivery of Justice/Rights of the people within the ambit of Constitution and the Law. And the Judiciary has an important role to play in ensuring such individual liberties to the people are ensured. It is important to note here that responsibility of Judiciary here is to ensure that Justice/Rights with constitution are delivered to people/individual litigants without considering the impact of such judgment on the ‘collective judicial officer community’ itself besides other actors like the government (other than the constitution) or communities or institutions or sundry groups/political parties etc. and thus maintain this equanimity and independence of judiciary. The idea here is that the state grants these rights to one and all to pursue individual betterment within the constitution/laws and this should have no other over-riding bearing but they should not impede over the rights of other people. This is to be done when a variety of ‘self-acclaimed Chowdhary’ are out putting up challenges and this may sometime include the state, its agencies or sundry interest groups and their leaders (who claim to be ‘rightfully’ representing a community) or local Dada/community leaders and/or Goonda/political elements and such elements. We have such actions like triple talaq or issues on individual’s entry in temples or other such public space or some other Netas pushing some cause on the back of guns (and claiming to represent ‘all individuals’ of a community) and receiving backing of government agencies or fringe groups/elements and impeding over such individual liberties. Many such Chowdhary take argument that such actions are to establish collective betterment of the community and some of these are often celebrated as community or religious group’s Neta by the commercial news media. Herd mentality of the people may sometime lead to political tolerance of such fringe Netas/people/groups/parties and the Judicial leadership should be able to look above and beyond these. What is important to note that such Netas almost never talk of individual betterment but just ‘a cause’ which in their personal opinion is a benefit to ‘whole community’ sans any logical scrutiny, and needs to be spiked.
What is important in the ‘age of commercial news media’ is that some rhetoric are almost always to be countered with counter rhetoric rather than ‘rational think’ which is sometimes an abstraction; and this often plays with Judiciary’s thinking. Then we have ‘event driven’ conclusions based on coverage of events rather than decisions based on some principles and (their) relationships based thinking as these again has some degree of abstraction and this is shunned by the commercial news media. Concerns about individuals and their rights/liberties is usually away from the interest of such media unless the same has some ‘event value’ as this would not have any TRP/followership value amongst public if the it is otherwise (non-event). The principles and (their) relationship values are thus being pushed aside by the commercial news media. The principle that public generally veers to move towards where they feel greater individual liberties and economic benefit is almost always lees than well-articulated by the nationalist and/or pseudo-nationalists in the commercial news media although they may want to paint other media in some imaginary colours. The same is although quite apparent if one looks at places attracting most immigrants and one would find how people are ready to surrender nationalities i.e. place which offer greater individual liberties alongside economic merits attract most immigrants and then come those offering economic merits. One should therefore strive to have a judiciary that can uphold individual liberties and allows them freedom with equal opportunities to participate in economic activities. The Judiciary should maintain vigil and regular self-review to ensure that it is able to deliver the same. Let the Game evolve….