The Chief Justice Must Be Like Ceasar’s Wife | Vijay Kumar

The circulation of a viral video showing Prime Minister, Narendra Modi, performing Ganpati Puja in the company of Chief Justice, Chandrachud, and his wife at the latter’s residence has disturbing implications for the independence of the judiciary and the insulated image of judges manning it.

The Ganpati festival is one of the most popular and pious festivals in Maharashtra. The Chief Justice, being Maharashtrian, has every right to celebrate this festival, but as a head of the judicial branch of the State, he is enjoined to maintain a very crucial distinction between private and public. High public functionaries, least of all the men on whom the stewardship of the judicial branch rests, should refrain from public display of his religious faith. Prime Minister, Modi, is an inglorious exception to this desirable norm and has the penchant and irresistible urge to convert his own puja into a public spectacle. To whom to invite in one’s function is the absolute prerogative of an ordinary person, but the holder of the highest judicial office of the largest democracy of the world has no such unfettered choice. The Chief Justice, Chandrachud, being endowed with exceptional scholarship, should have prefigured the all too evident fact of Prime Minister Modi wearing his religiosity on his sleeve and indulging in brazen and crude demonstration of the same.

The presence of the Prime Minister, Modi, will not cause any damage to him. On the contrary, it may pay him and his party electoral dividends. Modi, being a politician, has to meet all sorts of people. But the dignity of the office of the Chief Justice desiderates that he should insulate himself from the public, especially politicians. The public demonstration of intimacy between the Prime Minister and the Chief Justice in private function will erode the constitutionally desirable wall between these two offices.

The release of the video has resulted in the erosion of the image of the detachment and impartiality of the Chief Justice. The government is the single biggest litigant in the highest court of the land. It’s every decision and action is challenged before the Supreme Court and has to be tested on the touchstone of the Constitution. The Chief Justice of India, as a Head of the Judiciary, does not have any choice. He has to maintain a discreet distance from the politicians, and his act of inviting the Prime Minister for Ganesh Puja at his residence has undermined the statement of values formulated by the Full Court in 1997 during the Chief Justiceship of J.S. Verma. One of the values incorporated emphasizes the imperative of maintaining aloofness and distance for the judges from the politicians.

Right from his dissent in Abhiram Singh (2017), which overruled the notorious 1995 judgment that appeals in the name of Hindutva in elections, in itself without any potential to create enmity, does not amount to corrupt practice within the meaning of Section 123(3) of the Representation of People Act, 1951, Justice Chandrachud has entrenched his anti-secular credential not only through his subsequent judgment but also by his public conduct. His commitment to secularism, one of the most basic of all basic features of the Constitution, again came under the cloud through his Ayodhya judgment (widely believed to be authored by him) wherein he maintained the rhetoric of secularism but emasculated it in the operative portion.

Even the issue concerning the split in the Shiv Sena Party in Maharashtra resulting in the collapse of the Udhav Thakare government is pending before the Bench of Chief Justice before the Supreme Court. The hunky-dory image between the heads of the Judicial branch and the Political Executive may not influence the ultimate outcome of the case, but it certainly falls far short of old wisdom, reflected through the wholesome principle, that “justice must not only be done but must manifestly be seen to be done”. Further, Maharashtra is going for the Assembly poll in November, and Modi being a political animal, must have worn a Maharashtrian cap with crass and crude calculations to influence the voters.

I have been attending the Ganesh Puja festival in the homes of Maharashtrian Judges of the Supreme Court, and I have not seen a single instance of a politician being invited. It has always been a simple and small gathering of Judges – both sitting and retired with their spouses – and a handful of advocates.

Vikram Seth, one of the most gifted writers of the country, once remarked at the Jaipur Literary Festival that the power and importance of a writer rests on aloofness. This applies to judges with more rigour. Aloofness from the general public, especially politicians, is not a choice, but a constitutional imperative for judges in constitutional democracy. When one of the greatest Chief Justices of India, Justice M.N. Venkatachaliah, was sworn in as the Chief Justice by then President, Shankar Dayal Sharma, in the Rashtrapati Bhawan, the then Prime Minister, P.V. Narasimha Rao, otherwise one of the most erudite Prime Ministers, while congratulating the newly sworn-in Chief Justice, said that he was looking forward for cordial relationship with him to which Chief Justice, Venkatachalaiah responded by saying that “our relationship must be correct; not cordial”. The implicit in this statement of great wisdom is that some sort of healthy tension between the judiciary and political executive is desirable for the sound health of constitutional democracy.

Chief Justice, Chandrachud, shares one characteristic with the Prime Minister, Narendra Modi. Like Prime Minister Modi, he, too, is self-obsessed with his image and openly displays his religiosity rather than performing puja in utmost privacy. Earlier he, wearing saffron colour kurta pyjama, performed puja in one of the temples in Gujarat, which was extensively publicised, and thereafter, he addressed the District Judges by sermonizing that ‘Dhwaja’ must inform the exercise of justice dispensation. This was hardly expected from the Chief Justice of India. His reputation, despite being endowed with exceptional erudition, has considerably been dented on the eve of his retirement. The lesson from this wholly avoidable indiscreet act for other judges is to scrupulously maintain detachment and distance from politicians and observe privacy in their religious affairs.

( Author: Vijay Kumar, Senior Advocate, Supreme Court Of India The Author Of Recent Book: “The Theory Of Basic Structure : Saviour Of The Constitution And Democracy”)