www.theguardian.com<\/p>\n
Four senior Indian supreme court judges have gone public with an extraordinary warning that India\u2019s chief justice is mishandling sensitive cases and endangering the court\u2019s integrity and the country\u2019s democracy.<\/p>\n
The four judges, the most senior members of the bench after the chief justice, abruptly left their courtrooms on Friday morning and called the first press conference by members of the usually solemn institution.<\/p>\n
Led by judge Jasti Chelameswar, they delivered an unprecedented message to the journalists gathered in Delhi: that the conduct of India\u2019s highest court was \u201cnot in order\u201d and that \u201cunless this institution is preserved, democracy can\u2019t be protected in this country\u201d.<\/p>\n
The revolt against the chief justice, Dipak Misra, has been months in the making. It broke into the open<\/a> in November, when he was accused of mishandling a matter relating to a former judge alleged to have offered to bribe members of the supreme court in a case Misra himself was presiding over.<\/p>\n Misra has not been accused of taking bribes but was fiercely criticised, including by senior lawyers, for repeatedly intervening to ensure only judges of his choice could hear the matter.<\/p>\n One case cited by the four justices on Friday was a request for an independent investigation into the death of judge BH Loya, who was overseeing a case involving murder allegations against Amit Shah, a leading figure in the ruling Bharatiya Janata party (BJP). Media reports in recent months have raised suspicions over Loya\u2019s death.<\/p>\n Though politically charged cases have traditionally been overseen by the supreme court\u2019s most senior judges, the request for an independent investigation into Loya\u2019s death was assigned by Misra to a relatively junior member of the bench.<\/p>\n In a letter to Misra, which was released to the media on Friday, the four judges said: \u201cThere have been instances where cases having far-reaching consequences for the nation and the institution had been assigned by the chief justice of this court selectively to the benches \u2018of their preference\u2019 without any rationale for this assignment. This must be guarded against at all costs.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked by journalists if the chief justice should be impeached, Chelameswar said: \u201cLet the nation decide that.\u201d<\/p>\n The judges were at pains not to accuse Misra of any specific wrongdoing nor criticise any specific judgments. Rather, their charge is that by breaking from the traditional procedures for allocating cases \u2013 which heavily emphasise seniority \u2013 he is allowing what they called \u201cquestions on the integrity of the institution\u201d to fester.<\/p>\n Echoing criticism levelled at the court in past months, the Indian Express published an article<\/a> on Friday morning by a senior lawyer, Dushyant Dave, highlighting instances where Misra had failed to allocate the most senior judges available for sensitive cases.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is important for this institution to ensure that an impression is not given to the public that the constitution of benches and allocation of matters is being done in a manner more palatable to the executive,\u201d Dave wrote.<\/p>\n Chelameswar closed the dramatic press conference by saying: \u201cWe don\u2019t want wise men saying 20 years from now that justice Chelameswar, [Ranjan] Gogoi, [Madan B] Lokur and Kurian Joseph sold their souls and didn\u2019t do the right thing by our constitution.\u201d<\/p>\n Alok Kumar, a senior resident fellow at the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, said chief justices had earned the rancour of their colleagues in the past but Friday\u2019s events were \u201cbeyond the pale\u201d.<\/p>\n Misra, who was appointed chief justice by the Narendra Modi government in August, did not made any public remarks on Friday but is reportedly meeting with the Indian attorney general, who is also yet to comment.<\/p>\n The Indian supreme court is larger than its UK or US counterparts, accommodating up to 31 members whose ranks frequently change as judges choose to leave or reach the mandatory retirement age of 65.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" www.theguardian.com Four senior Indian supreme court judges have gone public with an extraordinary warning that India\u2019s chief justice is mishandling sensitive cases and endangering the court\u2019s integrity and the country\u2019s democracy. The four judges, the most senior members of the bench after the chief justice, abruptly left their courtrooms on Friday morning and called the first press conference by members… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":43,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1170","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-analysis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/43"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1170"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1171,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1170\/revisions\/1171"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1170"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1170"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/eastasiaandoceaniablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1170"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}