Dealing with the wheels of justice

When Justice N V Ramana assumed office as the 48th Chief Justice of India on April 24, 2021, he gave rise to great expectations. On his retirement today, 16 months later, there is more than a sense of disappointment. There is, perhaps, even a loss of hope.

If his retirement date, August 26, would be remembered, it is because on this day, for the first time in its history, there was live streaming of Supreme Court proceedings. The apex court calling for an expert committee and an all-party meeting to discuss the issue of freebies was the first order to be live streamed.

Those keeping track of pending cases in the Supreme Court point out that during CJI Ramana’s tenure, “there was no movement on six cases of national importance and 53 cases that required a wider review by a Constitution bench”.

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All these were kept pending as they had been during the tenure of his predecessors. Six cases of national importance pending for periods varying from five months to more than three years and that readily come to mind are:

• Abrogation of Article 370 in Jammu and Kashmir.
• Challenge to electoral bonds as a source of opaque and dubious political funding.
• Challenge to the repressive Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA), 1967.Challenge to the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, which has communalised neighbourhood diplomacy by offering citizenship to only non-Muslims Afghanistan, Pakistan and Bangladesh
• a Union Government’s reservation policy based solely on economic criteria and not caste.
• Karnataka ban on the hijab for Muslim students in government educational institutions.

The public perceptions of these pending cases may well have spurred the outgoing CJI to hasten the pace of justice on the penultimate day. Benches led by CJI N V Ramana took up on August 25 a clutch of important cases. These include a review of the PMLA judgment, the public interest litigation in the Bilkis Bano case, the Prime Minister’s security breach in Punjab and the matter of Pegasus snooping.

How these cases progress under CJI-designate Justice U U Lalit would be watched with more than average interest and not only by the political, legal and affected communities.

The author is an Editorial Consultant, WION TV.

(Disclaimer: The views of the writer do not represent the views of WION or ZMCL. Nor does WION or ZMCL endorse the views of the writer.)