On the eve of the retirement of Chief Justice N. V. Ramana from the Supreme Court, it may be worthwhile to examine both his individual performance, and the functioning of the apex court under his supervision during his tenure of sixteen months from April, 2021 till the end of August, 2022, when he is due to retire.
The issues being raised in the present article are in continuation of the questions that I posed regarding the performance of the N.V. Ramana-headed Supreme Court, in my earlier article `Supreme Court of India – from ambivalence to ambiguity through procrastination,’ carried by Countercurrents on May 29, 2022.
Interestingly enough, a few months ago on May 9, 2022, while speaking at a farewell function for a retiring colleague of his, Justice Vineet Saran, Chief Justice N. V. Ramana said: “Any achievement that we got during my tenure as CJI is a collective decision and credit should go to all of us and not individuals.” (Re: Live Adalat, May 12, 2020).
We therefore understand that the CJI assumes responsibility for, and approval of all the judgments that had been passed by his colleagues who were appointed by him to the various benches during his tenure. By adopting this criterion that has been set by him for evaluating judgments of the apex court, let us examine some of the crucial verdicts passed by him as well as his colleagues, that have impacted on our polity and society.
Chief Justice Ramana’s pronouncements and postponements
CJI Ramana’s reputation as a `people’s judge’ may have more to do with his public speeches outside the premises of the Supreme Court (which outnumbered the pronouncements that he delivered from within those premises). While from public platforms, he was vociferous about delivering justice to the common people, once back into his cloister in the apex court, he trod cautiously on controversial issues. For instance, he fought shy of confronting and delegitimizing the colonial law of sedition. Listen to his words while hearing a petition challenging Section 124 A of the Indian Penal Code: “Is this law still needed after 75 years of Independence ?” And then the next moment he said: “Our concern is misuse of the law and no accountability of the executive.” What do we make out of this pronouncement ? Apparently, although he might have had doubts about the necessity of the law, instead of recommending its scrapping, he willy-nilly accepted its implementation, only expressing his concern over its `misuse.’
To give him the benefit of doubt, CJI Ramana was perhaps being torn between two tensions. On the one hand, there was his official obligation under the prevailing legal system within which he was operating. On the other hand, there was his personal conscience which might have often felt uncomfortable with that system.
But while trying to be fair to CJI Ramana on the above account, we cannot pardon him for his lapses on other accounts.
More glaring than those ambiguous pronouncements of his, was his prevarication over cases which had been pending before the apex court for several years. A number of these cases need urgent settlement, as they affect the rights of the under privileged people as well as other citizens. The most important cases which still await his decision are the following: (i) a petition challenging the Citizenship (Amendment) Act; (ii) a petition challenging the abrogation of Article 370 relating to Jammu and Kashmir; (iii) a petition challenging the Karnataka High Court judgment banning hijab-wearing in pre-university colleges in Karnataka; (iv) a petition against the anti-encroachment demolition drive by the police in Jehangirpuri in east Delhi.
Incidentally, all these petitions question the policies and actions of the BJP-led government at the Centre, and BJP-ruled Karnataka. All through his tenure, CJI Ramana adjourned hearings and postponed his judgment on these controversial and politically sensitive petitions. Was he trying to avoid a confrontation with the government ? Justice N. V. Ramana owes an explanation to the people for his delay in settling these cases.
CJI’s colleagues in the Supreme Court
Let us take a look at some of the recent major judgments delivered by CJI Ramana’s colleagues under his tenure. On June 24 this year, a three judge bench headed by Justice A.M. Khanwilkar dismissed a petition seeking justice by Zakia Jafri, widow of Congress leader Ehsan Jafri who was killed by a mob of Hindu fanatics during the widespread communal riots in 2002 riots in Gujarat, which was then ruled by the chief minister Narendra Modi, who is now India’s Prime Minister. While dismissing the petition, the bench went a step further by branding Teesta Setalvad (the social activist and lawyer who was pleading on behalf of Zakia Jafri), as someone who needed “to be in the dock and proceeded with in accordance with law”. The apex court thus, in a curious twist, turned the complainant into the accused.
Encouraged by this judgment, the police immediately arrested Teesta Setalvad – whom they had been trying to prosecute all these years because of her trenchant criticism of the police, exposure of their atrocities, and her active role in protecting the rights of their victims in Gujarat. Thus, the SC judge provided them with the legal opportunity to punish her.
Soon after, following in the footsteps of this judgment, in July 2020, a Supreme Court bench headed by the same Justice A. M. Khanwilkar, passed another vindictive order. He imposed a penalty of Rs 5 lakhs on a social activist, Himangshu Kumar. His fault – he sought a CBI probe into extra-judicial killings by the Chhattisgarh police during anti-Maoist operations in Dantewada in 2009. Himangshu Kumar remains steadfast in his position and has announced that he will not pay the fine – thus defying the sentence passed by Justice Khanwilkar.
Posing questions to CJI N.V. Ramana
Does CJI Ramana approve of those two judgments passed by his colleague A.M. Khanwilkar ? Do not these two verdicts contradict the statements that he himself has been making from public platforms about upholding the right of citizens to claim justice and the need to deliver it to them ?
Let me address some straight questions to CJI N.V. Ramana – which side do you want to choose ? The petitioners who are demanding justice for the victims of the 2002 Gujarat riots, or those accused of killing them ? Will you support the high court judges who have released the rapists and murderers accused in the Bilkis Bano case, or will you dismiss their verdict (which you can as the head of the Supreme Court) and reinforce the earlier sentence of life imprisonment that they deserve ? Do you uphold the right of Himangshu Kumar to demand a probe into extra-judicial killings in Chhattisgarh, or support the penalty imposed upon him by your colleague ?
During these few days left in your tenure, will you come out with a judgment that rejects the atrocious verdicts passed by both your colleagues in the Supreme Court and the state high courts – verdicts that go against your own pledge to make justice accessible to the common people ? Will you pass a judgment halting the implementation of these verdicts ?
Sumanta Banerjee is a political commentator and writer, is the author of In The Wake of Naxalbari’ (1980 and 2008); The Parlour and the Streets: Elite and Popular Culture in Nineteenth Century Calcutta (1989) and ‘Memoirs of Roads: Calcutta from Colonial Urbanization to Global Modernization.’ (2016).
