New Delhi: Three years after being nominated to the Rajya Sabha, former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi made his first speech Monday in the House in support of the Government of National Capital of Delhi (Amendment) Bill 2023.
As Gogoi began discussion on the Bill in the Rajya Sabha, four women MPs — Sushmita Dev from the Trinamool Congress (TMC), Priyanka Chaturvedi and Vandana Chavan of the Shiv Sena (UBT), and Jaya Bachchan of the Samajwadi Party (SP) — walked out in protest.
The former CJI had faced allegations of sexual harassment when he was in the apex court. Later, a three-judge in-house committee cleared him of the allegations.
Coming out in support of the Bill, Gogoi said that he would dwell on the legalities of the Bill and on broadly three standpoints — sub-judice, overreaching of the Supreme Court’s order and the constitutional validity of the law.
“What is pending before the Supreme Court is the validity of the ordinance. What the House is debating is on the validity of a law,” Gogoi said.
He explained that what the Supreme Court was specifically yet to hear was two questions that had been referred to the constitutional bench.
In July, the Supreme Court had referred the Arvind Kejriwal-led AAP government’s plea against Centre’s Delhi services ordinance to a Constitution bench. The ordinance seeks to take away the control of services from the Delhi government.
Gogoi said that what is said in Parliament cannot be questioned in a court of law. Since the clause (3A) related to the two questions were removed from the Bill, Gogoi said that the questions stand “self-answered”.
“The Bill takes away 3A from the ordinance. To my mind, when 3A has been taken out and it is not there in the Bill, the questions referred to the Constitution bench stand self-answered,” he said.
Regarding the question of overreach against the Supreme Court judgment, Gogoi said that Parliament had the power to make laws on the state of Delhi. “The state legislature makes laws for the state, and Parliament makes laws for Union Territories,” Gogoi said.
“For the National Capital Territory of Delhi, which has a special status, the state legislature makes the laws on all state subjects, except three. Parliament (on the other hand) has the powers to make laws beyond these three. So, there is no question of overreaching,” he said.
“Is this law arbitrary? It doesn’t not appear to be so.”
Arguing that the Bill does not violate the basic features of the Constitution, he said that it provides a form of “triple autonomy”. “What you have under the Bill is a modified form of triple autonomy. The bureaucrat is responsible to the L-G, who is responsible to the Home Ministry, who’s responsible to the House,” he said.
In his speech, the former CJI also weighed in on the debate on doctrine of basic structure of the Constitution to support the Bill. He said that the basic structure has a “very debatable jurisprudential basis.”
The Rajya Sabha member ended his speech by asking for members to vote on the Bill as per their conscience, stating once again that he’s in support of the Bill. “What is permissible need not necessarily be right,” Gogoi said.
Later, the opposition parties came out against him for the remarks on the structure of the Constitution, with Congress MP K.C. Venugopal saying that the BJP was on its way to dismantle the Constitution.
“Is this the BJP’s trick to begin the full-fledged dismantling of the Constitution of India? Does it think that democracy, equality, secularism, federalism, judicial independence are all ‘debatable’ ideas?” he asked.
“Not surprising that those who have no regard for constitutional principles are now propping up a former CJI with a ‘debatable’ track record to begin their attack on the Constitution through this very dangerous throwaway line.”
“What is Mr. Gogoi’s argument? Is he saying that there is nothing called the basic structure that should be protected? Does the Government endorse this, Arjun Meghwal? They must categorically oppose this line of thought, or it will be clear that the BJP has now started a process to destroy the core tenets of our Constitution,” Venugopal tweeted.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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