Supreme Whispers by Abhinav Chandrachud

Author:Abhinav Chandrachud
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 9789353050214
Publisher: Penguin Random House India Private Limited
Published: 2018-04-27T04:00:00+00:00

Supersessions

After 1971, the government also followed a sustained policy of intimidating the judiciary and undermining judicial independence, using primarily three weapons in its armoury: supersessions, transfers and non-confirmations of additional judges and acting chief justices. The supersessions began when A.N. Ray was appointed chief justice of India. Since 1951, the convention was that the post of chief justice of India would go to the most senior Supreme Court judge, as we will see in the next chapter.180 When Sikri retired from the Supreme Court in April 1973, he was supposed to be replaced with Justice J.M. Shelat, the most senior Supreme Court judge at the court at the time. Thereafter, the post was supposed to go to Hegde and A.N. Grover successively, the senior judges next in line. However, when Sikri retired, the chief justiceship went to Justice Ray, a judge who had consistently voted in favour of the government, though he was not in line to become the chief justice of India under the seniority norm. Ray was junior to Shelat, Hegde and Grover, having been appointed to the Supreme Court after them. The three judges were, in essence, penalized for having decided important cases like the Basic Structure case against the government. Of course, there had been an instance of supersession before this, as we have seen, when Imam was superseded by Gajendragadkar. However, in that case, Imam had been superseded not for political reasons but because he was medically unable to discharge the office of the chief justice of India. With Ray, it was the first time that a supersession had been carried out on politically vindictive grounds. After Ray retired, the chief justiceship was supposed to have gone to the next most senior judge at the court at the time, Justice Khanna. However, Khanna was superseded as well, because he had decided cases like the Habeas Corpus case and Basic Structure case against the government. A judge junior to Khanna, M. Hameedullah Beg, was appointed to the chief justiceship. When the Janata government came to power after the Emergency, though there was some talk about Chandrachud (the next most senior judge) being superseded, no supersession was carried out, and the chief justiceship of the Supreme Court has devolved according to seniority ever since.

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