The Sleep Is Showing, Your Honour

Country’s apex judiciary is caught napping as the executive goes about curtailing civil liberties of dissenters and opponents

- Puneet Nicholas Yadav

When it comes to upholding civil liberties and constitutionally guaranteed rights, a conducive environment—or the lack of it—must not be grounds for courts to determine if a case pertaining to these bedrocks of democracy can be heard or deferred. Yet, in recent times, several legal luminaries have red-flagged how curtailment of civil liberties by the executive is being increasingly normalised by the judiciary—particularly the top court.

Over the past few years alone, irrespec­ tive of who sat on the high throne of the Chief Justice, the lamentation that judi­ ciary was acting as an extension of the executive has been far too frequent. Peti­ tions seeking urgent hearing of mob lyn­ ching cases or challenging the lockdown across Jammu and Kashmir were dee­med not urgent enough by former CJI Ranjan Gogoi, whose recent nomination to the Rajya Sabha by President Kovind under the ‘distinguished citizens’ quota has triggered a deafening opprobrium. Gogoi’s successor, S.A. Bobde, some say, has continued the trend with cases chal­ lenging the controversial CAA, atrocities on students in Jamia Millia Islamia and Jawaharlal Nehru University or alleged executive inaction during the communal riots in Delhi.

"SC judge Arun Mishra publicly hailed Narendra Modi as a “versatile genius”.