Dr Olav Albuquerque
Justice Ranjan Gogoi will become the next CJI after Dipak Misra demits office on October 2, if law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad is to be believed, setting at rest speculation that he is persona non grata for the Modi government after he jointly addressed the media with his seniormost colleagues in January this year.
Then he returned to his home state, did an about turn and said everything was okay within the judiciary.
What implications does all this have for Goa ? Fifty-seven years after liberation, the Bombay High Court has never had a Goan judge as its chief justice. It is the chief justice of the Bombay high court who takes decisions on appointment of high court and district court judges. Lower courts in Goa including the Mamlatdars’courts come under the supervision of the district magistrate who is appointed by the Goa government. Several mamlatdars are infamous for merely giving dates even in simple mutation cases. They have to dispose off mutations but take over two years in contested cases.
Just this week, the Governor has reportedly okayed an ordinance extending the deadline for regularizing unauthorized contructions in Goa which will have the effect of pushing up land prices in the state. A PIL challenging this ordinance was filed by activist Kashinath Shetye. This will make land a very scarce resource in Goa, so that only rich businessmen from outside Goa like Vijay Mallya can build plush bungalows.
The only Goan judge who ever became a chief justice was Ferdino Inacio Rebello who went as the chief justice of the Allahabad HC which is notorious for having an uncle-judge syndrome so that some judges who were appointed were known to be relatives of sitting judges.
But to return to the issue at hand, the January press conference was unprecedented because the CJI is the head of the judicial family throughout India. He is the only one with the authority to redress grievances within the judiciary. So, going to the media had the implication that CJI Dipak Misra endangered democracy in India, which is what the four judges alleged.
While responding to a question on whether BJP would adhere to protocol to appoint Gogoi as next CJI, Ravi Shankar Prasad told the media on June 18 that the sitting CJI always names his senior-most judge of the apex court as his successor. “When the name comes to us, we will discuss it...... But no one has the right to question our intention,” he said. This statement that “no one had the right to question our intention” appears sinister because the government comprises a single political party which professes an ideology espoused by the RSS of which Prime Minister Narendra Modi is a swayamsevak. Returning the name of Justice K.M. Joseph after it was reiterated by the SC collegium fuelled speculation that Joseph was persona non grata because he had struck down President’s rule imposed by Modi in Uttarakhand. Former Punjab supercop Julio Ribeiro openly declared that Joseph belonged to a minority community which may have been another reason for the BJP to oppose his elevation.
But opposing Justice Joseph’s elevation to the apex court is very different from superceding Justice Gogoi which will touch off a global outcry that democracy is really in danger because the judiciary has been suppressed by the executive as indirectly stated by judge Jasti Chelameshwar who retired on Friday.
Gogoi’s tenure of slightly over one year as CJI is too short. His collegium will comprise Justices Arjan Kumar Sikri, Sharad Bobde, N.V. Ramanna and Arun Mishra who will never do what the four rebel judges did because Bobde and Ramanna are slated to become CJIs in 2019 and 2021. Chelameshwar had accused Mishra who was entrusted with the Judge Loya case.
In 1977, Indira Gandhi superceded Justice H.S. Khanna by Justice M.H. Beg following his historic dissent in the ADM Jabalpur case, where he stood up for the fundamental right to life and liberty during the Emergency.
In 1973, following Kesavananda Bharati judgment, which toppled Gandhi’s Constitutional amendments to give Parliament supremacy over the judiciary and introduced the basic structure doctrine, three senior-most judges of the SC J.M. Shelat, A.N. Grover and K.S. Hegde, resigned after the government superseded them to appoint Justice A.N. Ray as CJI to succeed then CJI S.M. Sikri. Ray was supposed to be so close to Indira Gandhi that he reportedly phoned her to elicit her views on major issues before the court.
According to the memorandum of procedure, a document which guides the appointment and transfer of judges of the apex court and the 24 high courts, other senior judges should be consulted for appointment of the next CJI only if there is grave doubt about the fitness of the seniormost judge to become the next CJI. But there is no doubt that Ranjan Gogoi is fit enough to occupy the CJIs office.
But whether he will resist the Modi government’s insistence on having the last say on who will be elevated as SC judges remains to be seen.
(Dr Olav Albuquerque holds a PhD in law and is a journalist-cum-lawyer of the Bombay high court)
