Shourie singles out judiciary, says Loya and Prasad Trust cases have particularly hurt credibility of Supreme Court.
Mumbai: There has been a decline in secular values in all state institutions in the country, including the judiciary, with two recent cases in particular having hurt the credibility of the Supreme Court, former Union minister and author Arun Shourie said Monday night.
Speaking at ThePrint’s Off the Cuff event in Mumbai, Shourie said the Supreme Court’s judgment in the petitions for an independent investigation into the death of Judge B H Loya, and its role in the Lucknow-based Prasad Educational Trust case have done the maximum damage to the apex court’s credibility. Shourie was in conversation with ThePrint’s Editor-in-chief Shekhar Gupta.
The apex court had last month dismissed petitions seeking an independent probe in the death of Judge Loya, a CBI special court judge hearing the Sohrabuddin Sheikh encounter case in which Amit Shah, now the BJP national president, was an accused. In the case of the Prasad Educational Trust, there were allegations of judicial corruption.
“It is not a comprehensive rot. Sometimes you get very good judges at the bottom and you get absolutely odd judgments in the high court. Sometimes, the Supreme Court restores them. Sometimes, as in Judge Loya’s case, it is the Supreme Court that gives an incomprehensible judgment. So it is selective rotting,” Shourie said.
The former minister in the Atal Bihari Vajpayee regime recently released a book, ‘Anita Gets Bail,’ on the cracks that have surfaced in the country’s judiciary. The semi-autographical book delves into several important issues that have brought disrepute to the judiciary, particularly the higher courts, in recent years.
Shourie further said that the “rot” wasn’t confined to the courts. “I think there is a secular, long-term decline in all institutions in India, and in state institutions in terms of quality and personnel. If you see the calibre of those in Parliament, and in the civil services. Compare Indira Gandhi’s PMO to that of Narendra Modi’s,” he said.
Shourie, who holds a PhD in economics, said he agreed with the charges raised by the four senior-most SC judges, who held a press conference in January listing out a litany of problems with the apex court, especially the selective assignment of sensitive cases to certain judges.
“When any politically important case is assigned to a particular judge, you can forecast what the judgment will be. This was the charge of the four judges that cases were being selectively assigned,” Shourie said. “From the time the present chief justice assumed the position to the time of the press conference, he had constituted seven judicial benches and in not one of them, were any of the five senior-most judges included,” he added.
Shourie also said that the grounds on which members of the opposition sought the impeachment of Chief Justice Dipak Misra were solid, though adding that impeachment ought to be used as the last resort. The opposition had last month submitted a petition signed by 71 Rajya Sabha MPs seeking Misra’s impeachment.
Vice President Venkaiah Naidu, also chairman of the Rajya Sabha, rejected the petition. “The grounds on which impeachment was sought were solid grounds. The chairman does not have the authority to examine the grounds. His job is to simply count the number of votes and ensure the grounds don’t pertain to mischief. Whether the evidence is sufficient or not was something that the court should have found out,” Shourie said.
