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After 18 ex-judges accused Amit Shah of misinterpreting the Salwa Judum verdict, 56 former judges hit back, calling their stance a misuse of judicial independence for politics.
INDIA Bloc VP candidate Sudarshan Reddy. (PTI)
Soon after a group of 18 retired judges, including eight from the Supreme Court and 11 from various State High Courts, wrote to Union Home Minister Amit Shah accusing him of “misinterpreting” the Supreme Court judgment in the Salwa Judum case and defending the opposition’s Vice Presidential candidate B Sudarshan Reddy, a larger group of 56 former judges released a joint statement. This statement suggested that the stance of the 18 judges amounted to misusing “the cover of judicial independence for political convenience.”
“This has become a predictable pattern where every major political development is met with statements from the same quarters. These statements are determined to cloak their political partisanship under the language of judicial independence. This practice does a great disservice to the institution we once served, as it projects judges as political actors,” said the strong statement.
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The statement was signed by notable figures such as former Chief Justices of India P Sathasivam and Ranjan Gogoi, former Supreme Court judges Justice AK Sikri and Justice (Retd) MR Shah, former Chief Justice of Madhya Pradesh High Court Justice Suresh Kait, former Chief Justice of Jammu and Kashmir High Court Justice Ali Mohammad Magrey, and former Chief Justice of Kerala High Court Justice Navniti Prasad Singh, among others.
The 56 former judges expressed their views without naming Reddy, who had projected himself as an apolitical “concerned citizen”. They observed, “A fellow retired judge has chosen, of his own volition, to contest the election for the office of the Vice President of India. By doing so, he has stepped into the political arena as a candidate supported by the opposition. Having made that choice, he must defend his candidacy like any other contestant in the realm of political debate. To suggest otherwise is to stifle democratic discourse and to misuse the cover of judicial independence for political convenience.”
In contrast, the statement of the 18 former judges defended Reddy by asserting, “A Judge in his tenure decides innumerable cases based on legal issues and purely by law. To suggest that in this case the judge in question has acted on personal ideology undermines the institutional integrity. Every citizen has a right to criticise a judgment, but to do so on personal reasons will erode the belief of the public in the concerned institutions.”
Amit Shah had allegedly accused Justice B Sudershan Reddy, a former Judge of the Supreme Court, of “supporting” Maoism. Recently in Kerala, Shah said that had Justice Reddy not delivered the Salwa Judum judgment, “the Naxal terrorism would have ended by 2020″. Salwa Judum was a state-supported vigilante campaign against Maoists in Chhattisgarh that involved village-level mobilisations. In 2011, Reddy’s verdict at the Supreme Court of India declared the appointment of tribal youth as SPOs under Salwa Judum unconstitutional, ordered their disbanding, and directed the state to recover arms given to them.
In a tit-for-tat response, the 56 former judges offered advice to the 18 former judges, stating, “Judicial independence is not threatened by the criticism of a political candidate. What truly tarnishes the reputation of the judiciary is when former judges repeatedly issue partisan statements, giving the impression that the institution itself is aligned with political battles.”
As the Vice Presidential election on September 9 approaches, the battle between the former judges also appears to be intensifying.
About the Author
Anindya Banerjee, Associate Editor brings over fifteen years of journalistic courage to the forefront. With a keen focus on politics and policy, Anindya has garnered a wealth of experience, with deep throat in …Read More
Anindya Banerjee, Associate Editor brings over fifteen years of journalistic courage to the forefront. With a keen focus on politics and policy, Anindya has garnered a wealth of experience, with deep throat in … Read More
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