Flawed judgement

The judiciary has a huge backlog of unfinished work

If I had a world of my own, said Alice, “everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn’t. And contrary wise, what is, it wouldn’t be. And what it wouldn’t be, it would. You see?” In Alice’s wonderland the judiciary would do the executive’s work, civil society would do Parliament’s, Parliament would do the judiciary’s, and the government would run business. Such an upside-down world could become a reality if recent trends in governance in India are allowed to go unchecked. Even before the country has recovered from the charade of a self-appointed civil society group drafting a Bill for Parliament’s consideration, two learned judges of the Supreme Court of India have taken charge of an open-ended investigation into black money hoarded abroad, directing the head of India’s premier intelligence agencies to report to it directly through a special investigation team. Tomorrow, another learned judge may well ask the head of the Intelligence Bureau or the Research and Analysis Wing of the Cabinet Secretariat to share national secrets with the public in the interests of transparency. This is not acceptable. India cannot be governed this way.

The learned judges may have good reasons to be frustrated at the pace of government investigations into black money. But millions of citizens may be equally frustrated with the slow pace of judicial proceedings. Thousands languish in jails as undertrials and hundreds of important cases wait to be heard because the judiciary is not doing its job efficiently and quickly. Would it be acceptable if the government or any other institution were to step in and say that it would perform the judiciary’s work and speed up the disposal of cases? Will the judiciary tolerate another constitutional body displacing it and taking over its work? Surely not.

If India’s judges are not able to function more efficiently, they should show some understanding of the slowness of functioning of government agencies, however frustrating it may be. By all means, admonish the government for not doing its job properly, even if the judiciary resents a similar ticking off and would regard that as contempt of court. However, to go beyond admonishing, and seeking to take over the executive’s work while directing the heads of investigating agencies to report to it, is a dangerous usurpation of the work of one arm of the government by another. This will not serve the national interest well.

Hopefully, the learned retired judge, Justice B P Jeevan Reddy, will recuse himself and advise the Supreme Court against walking this path. Hopefully, the Chief Justice of India will convince his brothers on the bench to rethink their order. The order may be well intentioned and many may welcome it, given that people are frustrated with the manner in which the investigation into high-profile black money cases has progressed. Even so, the Supreme Court has made a mistake and must retrace its steps.