George Orwell’s Animal Farm is a parody of communism where heroes are made villains and vice-versa. With some changes, this appears to be taking place within India because a lawyer has flayed two of our finest judges for speaking bluntly in favour of justice while denigrating a woman who complained against the 46th Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi. Behind her back. Without giving her a chance of being heard before going to the media which violates the principle of judging nobody unheard or audi alteram partem.
The chairman of the Bar Council of India, Manan Kumar Mishra, panned Justices Jasti Chelameshwar and Madan Lokur last week for pointing out the three-judge panel which gave a clean chit to CJI Ranjan Gogoi had done injustice to the woman by refusing her a lawyer and also denying her a copy of their report giving a clean chit to the CJI. The woman had alleged Justice Ranjan Gogoi had sexually harassed her and terminated the services of her husband and his two brothers by misusing his Constitutional office.
Earlier, Mishra had wanted the rape laws to be diluted because he felt they were being misused by women. This is why he called for lawyers to join a massive “Men Too movement” to demand the dilution of rape laws. His fanciful opinions seem to be based on his personal whims. Like when he did not know whether to oppose or support the Jammu lawyers who went on strike to prevent the filing of a charge-sheet against the influential MLA who allegedly raped and killed a minor girl in Kathua.
As a result of his diatribes, over 200 women lawyers demanded a written apology from the BCI chairman for allegedly misusing his public office to ask lawyers to join the “Men Too Movement” on May 15. Undaunted by this, Mishra announced his “shock and surprise” over the two former Supreme Court judges, Jasti Chelameshwar and Madan Lokurm, pointing to the institutional bias of the Supreme Court after the three-judge panel gave a clean chit to CJI Ranjan Gogoi. Perhaps the BCI chairman assumes he knows more about the internal working of the Supreme Court than Justices Chelameshwar (whom he misspelled as Chemeleshwar in 2018) and Madan Lokur.
For one thing, Mishra uses the letterhead of the Bar Council of India to publicise his personal gems of wisdom which do not necessarily reflect the opinions of India’s 1.3 million lawyers. Uttar Pradesh tops the list with 288,297 lawyers while 113,298 are from Mishra’s home state of Bihar and 112,706 are from Maharashtra and Goa.
It is impossible to get a consensus from any one state leave alone for all the lawyers in India whom the BCI chairman claims to represent while sending letters to the media on the BCI letterhead. He has also no business advising retired judges what to speak and what not to because he has no jurisdiction over them.
While Justice Chelameshwar, known to speak bluntly, had said, “No one is above the law, at least not in my opinion, and hence I don’t see why the procedure for this (sexual harassment complaint) case should be any different from the law of the land. I would not want to comment on individuals at this stage since we don’t know whether the allegations are true or false. But due process of law was not followed by the Supreme Court while denying the complainant a copy of the report exonerating CJI Ranjan Gogoi of sexually harassing the woman.”
Chelameswar criticised finance minister Arun Jaitley for a blog post backing the clean chit given to Gogoi. The retired judge said when the four judges had held a press conference, the government had called it the Supreme Court’s internal matter. “However, we have Union ministers who are now willing to come to the rescue or defend the institution,” he added. “Why the double face?”
Justice Madan B Lokur opined in an op-ed piece that the woman who accused Gogoi of misconduct was treated unfairly and said there was “institutional bias” in how the Supreme Court had handled her complaint.
The Bar Council of India is a statutory body set up by Parliament by enacting the Advocates Act, 1961 to regulate the practice of law and prescribe minimum standards for lawyers. Hence, the BCI chairman has no business commenting on the allegations levelled by the former woman staffer against the 46th CJI without assessing evidence after investigation. This is a role meant for the police and the courts and not for the BCI chairman.
And so, the BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra is overstepping his bounds by defaming Justice Chelameshwar, one of the finest judges the Supreme Court has seen in recent time, by alleging he, with Justice Madan Lokur, had a personal grudge against CJI Ranjan Gogoi because “they could not occupy the country’s highest judicial office despite being senior to him (CJI Gogoi) in the hierarchy.”
This statement appears puerile and hilarious because Justice Madan Lokur was recently appointed a non-resident judge of the Supreme Court of Fiji (SCF) from August 15, 2019. Like any other retired judge, Justice Jasti Chelameshwar is earning by chairing arbitral tribunals. Something which nearly 90 per cent of retired judges do.
Even a lowly district judge is programmed in the state judicial academies to neutralize his personal biases and piques before sitting on the bench. So, for the BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra to allege bias against judges like Chelameshwar and Madan Lokur who have pointed that the due process of law was flouted by the three-judge panel of the Supreme Court, shows the BCI chairman in a sorry light.
The BCI is an institution by itself as is the Supreme Court but each operates in different spheres although they are complementary to each other. The judiciary is the custodian of the Constitution and judges like Jasti Chelameshwar, Madan Lokur and others of their ilk have a duty to speak out bluntly when Constitutional morality is flouted to protect the image of the Supreme Court. It is then that justice is seen to be done which the BCI chairman Madan Kumar Mishra may not agree with.
The writer holds a PhD in Media Law. He is a journalist-cum-lawyer of the Bombay High Court.
