Congress flags govt's indirect control over judiciary

Aditi Tandon

Tribune News Service

New Delhi, December 7

The Congress on Tuesday said judicial independence had come under scrutiny in recent years and demanded a broad law to strengthen service conditions of judges and ensure meaningful separation of powers between the judiciary and the executive.

Opening the debate on the High Courts and Supreme Courts (Salaries and Conditions of Service) Amendment Bill, 2021, that clarifies matters pertaining to judicial pensions, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor flagged “government’s increasing influence over judicial appointments and the executive’s overarching, sometimes invisible and indirect control over the judiciary”.

He along with several other MPs demanded that retirement age of SC judges be raised from 65 to 67 years and that of high court judges be raised from 62 to 65 years to manage pendency of cases, currently a whopping 4.4 crore (3.77 crore in subordinate courts; 57 lakh in high courts and 73,000 in the SC).

Tharoor took the occasion to cite instances of delay in the hearing of petitions challenging abrogation of Article 370, Citizenship Amendment Act, illegality of CBI among others to claim, “By its continued inaction, the court has not just allowed government sins against citizens to unpunished, it has also led some critics to ask whether the SC should also be considered an accomplice in the violation of rights granted by the Constitution.”

A day after the 29th anniversary of the Babri Masjid demolition (on December 6, 1992), Tharoor said, “It is fitting to recall how an act of vandalism was legitimised by the court. There has been a clear failure on the part of the judiciary to stem the tide of militant majoritarianism.”

He questioned the award of clean chit to the government in the Rafale jet matter and said, “The clean chit was given on the basis of famous sealed covers containing evidence exchanged between the CJI and government alone.”

The Congress MP mentioned non-hearing by the court of petitions challenging the abrogation of Article 370 and said, “There is an ipso facto concern of executive influence which has seemingly constrained the judiciary. The court was seen as a constitutional instrument to define the limits of executive control over the erstwhile state of J&K. Can Article 356 be used to suspend an assembly in a state and alter the nature of the state itself? Can a state be downgraded to a UT? These are constitutional questions. By repeatedly delaying the hearing on petitions, the SC failed to fulfill its role as protector of the Constitution while the rights of the people of J&K remained restricted.”

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