New Delhi: At least 56 former judges of the Supreme Court and various high courts have issued a statement expressing solidarity with Madras High Court judge, Justice G.R. Swaminathan, against whom an impeachment motion has been submitted in the Lok Sabha, calling the move “anti-democratic, anti-constitutional, and an anathema to the rule of law”.
The statement has been signed by former Supreme Court judges Justice Adarsh Goel and Hemant Gupta, along with five former high court chief justices, and several retired judges of the high courts of Patna, Karnataka, Sikkim, Madras, Delhi, Jharkhand, Punjab & Haryana, Rajasthan, Telangana, Madhya Pradesh, Allahabad, Gujarat, Kerala and Uttarakhand.
More than 100 INDIA bloc MPs, led by the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam’s (DMK) Kanimozhi Karunanidhi, moved the motion before Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla on 9 December, seeking Swaminathan’s impeachment, saying his conduct “raises serious questions regarding impartiality, transparency, and the secular functioning of the judiciary”.
It also alleged “undue favoritism” being shown to senior advocate M. Sricharan Ranganathan in deciding cases, along with “favouring advocates from a particular community”.
“Deciding cases on the basis of particular political ideology and against the secular principles of Indian Constitution,” added the motion, seen by ThePrint.
The statement of solidarity now asserts that this is a “brazen attempt to browbeat judges who do not fall in line with the ideological and political expectations of a particular section of society”.
“If such an attempt is permitted to proceed, it would cut at the very roots of our democracy and the independence of the judiciary. Even if the reasons mentioned by the signatory Member(s) of Parliament are taken at face value, they are wholly inadequate to justify resorting to such a rare, exceptional and serious constitutional measure as impeachment,” the statement, seen by ThePrint, says.
It recollects the period of the Emergency imposed by then Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, when the then government adopted various mechanisms including supersessions to penalise judges who refused to “toe the line”.
The sequence of events at the time, it said, was a reminder of “how political overreach can damage judicial independence”.
The statement asserts that this motion isn’t an “isolated aberration”, and that it “fits into a clear and deeply troubling pattern in our recent constitutional history, where sections of the political class have sought to discredit and intimidate the higher judiciary whenever outcomes do not align with their interests”.
The statement says that the purpose of the impeachment mechanism is to uphold the integrity of the judiciary, not to “convert it into a tool of arm-twisting, signalling and retaliation”.
“To wield the threat of removal as a means of compelling judges to conform to political expectations is to turn a constitutional safeguard into an instrument of intimidation. Such an approach is anti-democratic, anti-constitutional, and an anathema to the rule of law…Today, the target may be one judge; tomorrow, it will be the institution as a whole,” the statement warns.
It, therefore, calls upon all stakeholders, including Members of Parliament across party lines, members of the Bar, civil society, and citizens at large to unequivocally denounce this move.
(Edited by Amrtansh Arora)