Your Exalted Lordships,
This is but one letter in the series of “unsolicited advice”
I am writing. I did start the series with a letter to the leader of the largest
opposition party. You can read it at http://blog.deepakmisra.com/2016/12/dear-mr-gandhi.html
. I don’t know if he did get around to reading it, but I do observe a certain
maturity in him now and would like to think that my advice contributed to this
change.
I thought that a letter to the head of the government would
be the next one, but yours is an important institution and I am bumping up the
priority of my letter.
It is with a bit of trepidation that I write this letter. You see, the laws regarding contempt of court
are a big vague and I am not sure as to how frankly I can talk without invoking
the majesty of your wrath. My legal advisers are my family, one of whom is an
advocate with a rich experience of 6
months. The consensus like many of your judgments were split and the majority
decision was “Why to get into this?". However I decided to persevere.
I did a cursory
reading before starting this letter and if I see http://www.legalserviceindia.com/article/l255-Contempt-of-Court.html along with other reading I might be on the
right side of the law. If by chance I don’t, an unqualified apology from me
right away. My intent is not to lower the
dignity of the court , scandalize it or obstruct the delivery of justice
, but view my advice more of what would
be called constructive criticism. As a
citizen of the “world’s largest democracy”
my unease of the developments happening around our democratic
institutions have been increasing day by day in an increasing order of
magnitude.
Most articles of this nature are written as “articles”
addressing the population at large and referring to everyone in third person,
but I find this a bit constraining and think that writing as if addressing you
directly makes my points a bit direct.
Now I don’t know a good place to start.
Maybe looking at a photo of Mr. B R Ambedkar might be a good
starting point since his image adorns the walls of every institution and
probably is framed behind your desks.
(source: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4b/Dr._B.R._AMBEDKAR_OIL_PAINTING.jpg)
This great Indian was the chief architect
behind the formation of our republic’s
guiding principles in the form of a constitution. For agnostics like me, this
document replaces a holy book.
One of the guiding principles of this “holy book” was the
defining of organs of the republic. There is some scope for discussion on which
is supreme, the people or the constitution. I think it is safe to say that the
will of the people is supreme provided
it does not contradict the core values
of what we as a nation decided so many decades back. Our constitutional
creators were great people and in my opinion reasonably ahead of their time. I
do wish that they had framed their output in somewhat simpler language which
would enable laymen such as myself to understand the broader and subtle nuances
of the law.
Let us take a quick look at what the framers of the
constitution had envisaged as a main role of judicial organ which is one of the
pillars of our democracy. I am sure that Dr. Ambedkar, as he spent late nights
and numerous meetings, had never thought
that the highest court of the land and final dispenser of justice would be spending time among other things on:
- How cricket should be administered in India.
- How many injections TB patients need to take.
- What should be the engine size of vehicles in
one specific city.
- Whether jokes against a certain community should
be banned. I can just imagine the dignified face of Dr Ambedkar were he alive
and listening to this case.
If I continue in this vein, I would be spending a
substantial amount of my time and yours if you happen to read this letter. This
would dilute the overall focus of what I am trying to say , so let’s leave it
at that.
I do think that the founding fathers had envisaged that a constitutional
court and high courts would spend their time adjudicating on matters relating
to the constitution and ensuring that the fundamental rights of citizens remain, as per their definition, fundamental. There has been an increasing attack on one
of the fundamental rights, the freedom of expression. The attack has
unfortunately been originating from all directions including your courts. As
per my layman’s understanding, a judge steps in when there is a dispute and adjudges
this dispute bases the reasoning on existing laws. I don’t think the framers of
the constitution had envisaged a situation where the judiciary would step into
deciding on laws, depending on what is good for the country, getting into
policy and reforming the country.
While I do appreciate your noble intent of reforming the
country, a good place to start is always at home. What are the matters closer to your home?
Let us face it that the delivery of justice in this country
has miserably failed. I looked at some
old data and find that 66% of the prisoners in the countries jails are
undertrials out of which more than 40%
remain in jail for 6 month before
getting bail. I thought that is no authoritative substantive data to support my
assertion that most of these people would be illiterate and won’t know how to
spell constitution. However I see https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Heres-proof-that-poor-get-gallows-rich-mostly-escape/articleshow/48151696.cms
and if the data is assume to be accurate.
To quote the article:
A first of its kind
study, which has analyzed data from interviews with 373 death row convicts over
a 15-year period, has found three-fourths of those given the death penalty
belonged to backward classes, religious minorities and 75% were from
economically weaker sections.
The reason why the poor, Dalits and those from the backward castes get a rougher treatment from our courts is more often than not their inability to find a competent lawyer to contest their conviction. As many as 93.5% of those sentenced to death for terror offences are Dalits or religious minorities.
The reason why the poor, Dalits and those from the backward castes get a rougher treatment from our courts is more often than not their inability to find a competent lawyer to contest their conviction. As many as 93.5% of those sentenced to death for terror offences are Dalits or religious minorities.
The other point is
the delayed justice system.
Let us take 2 extreme cases:
* Rudal Shah,
arrested in 1953, remained in Bihar’s
Muzaffarpur jail for 30 years despite being acquitted in 1968.
* Boka Thakur,
arrested at age 16, was jailed and detained without trial for 36 years in Bihar’s
Madhubani jail.
These maybe isolated
cases , but are in my opinion an
indicator of the systematic rot that remains in our countries justice
system. I do vividly remember the L N
Mishra case since I had started the
daily reading of newspapers around the time of his assassination.
http://www.rediff.com/news/report/seven-things-you-should-know-about-the-40-year-long-l-n-mishra-case/20141208.htm informs me that 4 people were convicted of
his murder 40 years after the assassination. One of the accused who is now 67 years old had 31 of
his 37 witnesses die during the trial. A more religious person than me would
say that the almighty is the final dispenser of justice but then, the nation’s
founders wisely decided to keep the almighty out of the justice system.
Now a country’s progress to a large extent can be measured
by the value it puts on its values and
it is envisaged that the highest court in the country is the final succor for
the ordinary citizen. His rights are protected by the constitution
which again is the book which you swore your allegiance to ,when you took your
oath of office. The right to speedy justice is a very important right explicit
or implicit. The supreme web site informs me that the pending cases in the
court as on -1-Nov-2017 was 55259. With this backlog, do you really think
deciding on how cricket is to be governed in India is a priority?
http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/24-high-courts-short-of-43-65-judges-have-40-54-lakh-pending-cases/story-rY3IH9e760SfheEzKI38JJ.html
informs that there are approx.. 54 Lakh pending before various high courts.
While is it is easy to blame the shortage of judges as the primary reason , I
would strongly differ with the proponents of this assertion. Let me humbly ask, with these statistics,
does it really seem correct for courts to
have summer, winter, Diwali vacations?
Just think of the state of the nation if any other organ had these type
of vacations.
Let us switch tracks a bit and come to my duties as a
citizen of this country. As a dutiful citizen I try my best to go and vote
every election. For better or worse , by this process we have someone who
represents the will of a majority of the people and hopefully will do his best to
ensure that this will get translated into some action within the framework by
which he was elected. For example, if he feels that liquor is against the
interests of the people he will work to see that availability of liquor is
restricted. He has a certain accountability for his actions since he knows that
the next election is the acid test whether he was faithful to his constituent
or not. Okay I admit that I have gone into a very idealistic mode and real life is far removed from this
idealistic scenario that I painted. What
I am thinking about belongs in a text book and I could be justifiably accused
of hallucinatory tendencies with this essay,
but let us assume that we are in a text book mode.
Your institution has been making gradual inroads into areas
outside your jurisdiction and this is reaching an alarming state. You see, you
are getting into areas your don’t have expertize on nor do you have the
authority or accountability to see your actions being actually implemented. The
vast long term damage your actions are causing cannot be understated.
All this writing maybe a bit heavy to assimilate, so let me
stop at this point and plan on a part 2.
