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| And then there were none... | | Conflict of interest must be interpreted broadly |
| Business Standard / New Delhi Nov 06, 2009, 00:34 IST |
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Justice RV Raveendran recusing himself from the case of the warring Ambani brothers on the grounds that his daughter was employed in a law firm which was advising Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries Limited (RIL) is, at one level, in keeping with the finest traditions of the judiciary. Justice, as Justice Raveendran has been quoted as saying, must not only be done, it must be seen to be done. Indeed, it is in keeping with the tradition that, on the same day, in the same Supreme Court, Justice Markandey Katju also recused himself — this time in a case involving the same RIL and the government-owned Bharat Petroleum. In Justice Katju’s case, he cited shares held by his wife in RIL as the reason for wanting to recuse himself. While we have to laud the two judges for being so transparent, especially at a time when the judiciary has come increasingly under the good governance scanner, there is a case for assessing what constitutes conflict of interest. Surely it cannot be anyone’s case that Justice Raveendran’s daughter working in a firm which advised RIL is a conflict of interest. If this were the case, no judge can ever sit on a bench dealing with major corporate houses anywhere in the country since some relative of his/hers will be working with a company which has a relationship with one of the plaintiffs, no matter how indirect. In the case of Justice Katju, the so-called conflict is equally difficult to pin down. His wife owned a few hundred shares of RIL — so even if the prices rose by a whopping Rs 50 a share, few will believe a judge of his stature is likely to be influenced by that kind of gratification. In the case of Justice Roshan Dalvi, who had to recuse herself from the same Ambani case while it was in the Bombay High Court, she held four (yes, that’s f-o-u-r!) shares of NTPC. No one who knows anything about the market can believe that a single judgment is going to sink/save RIL or NTPC — and what would it do to the value of four shares? How much this “conflict” involving Justices Dalvi and Katju’s shares is worth is what we need to think about. And if the lawyers of both sides, RIL and the Anil Ambani-owned Reliance Natural Resources Limited (RNRL), had no objections to Justice Raveendran’s declaration that he held shares of both the companies, why is there a problem with Justice Katju’s wife owning RIL shares?
It will be unfair to expect the honourable judges to take a view on this since they are interested parties and are going by the manner in which “conflict of interest” can be interpreted by the advocates of the warring sides, and if the advocates are going to behave in a certain manner, why should the judges be expected to let their reputations be sullied? But the government and the judiciary together, including the advocate community, need to look at the losses caused by interpreting conflict of interest in this narrow fashion. The RIL-RNRL case may not have too much of a setback since just a week’s hearings have taken place, but what about the RIL-Bharat Petroleum case, in which the hearings have already been concluded and the judgment reserved — that is, the judges have only the judgment to write? The case will now have to be re-heard all over again and this process could take years, given how jammed the benches are with cases. Justice delayed, to cite another judicial saying of a piece with the justice-must-be-seen-to-be-done, is justice denied.
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