Are SC judges false gods?

Search the internet for the sentence ldquoI have full faith in the judiciaryrdquo You will come across pages after web pages with links to a variety of people publicly reposing their trust in the judiciary certain that it would exonerate them of the charges the State falsely levelled against them or annul laws trampling upon their rights or even restore their governments toppled through defectionTheir faith in the judiciary resembles that of the devout in GodThe faith of the seekers of justice will have been shaken with the Supreme Court upholding on December 11 the Modi governmentrsquos 2019 decision to abrogate Article 370 of the Indian Constitution which granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir Few expected the Supreme Court to reverse the abrogation But all hoped it would furnish legally and morally persuasive arguments in favour of the abrogation and annul at least the demotion of Jammu and Kashmir from a state to a Union TerritoryThe Supreme Court judgment is worrying because the Modi government abrogated Article 370 through two Presidential orders The correct way of altering the Constitution as jurist Fali S Nariman pointed out last week was for the government to bring a bill to Parliament for amending Article 370 and getting it passed Unsure of mustering the twothirds majority required to pass an amendment bill in each House the government chose to subvert the ConstitutionThe five Supreme Court judges frowned upon the two Presidential orders as ldquobackdoor amendmentsrdquo Yet they unanimously endorsed an example of executive despotismThe Modi governmentrsquos decision to abrogate Article 370 was as momentous as Indira Gandhirsquos to nationalise 14 private banks in July 1969 and abolish in May 1970 the privy purse system The Supreme Court struck down both these decisions of Mrs Gandhi Her government amended the Constitution to overturn the Supreme Courtrsquos judgments Mrs Gandhi had her way in the end but the Supreme Court demonstrated it was not going to meekly keel overIt is hard to recall examples of the Supreme Court in recent times reading down laws the party in power enacted The exception was the 99th Constitutional Amendment which sought to constitute a judicial commission for appointing judges The Supreme Court struck it down in 2015 saying it compromised the independence of the judiciary Sadly the Supreme Court has not shown the same zeal for protecting the rights of the individual as it showed in guarding its turf from executive encroachment through the 99th AmendmentThe reverse in fact has happened For instance the Supreme Courtrsquos interpretations of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act and Prevention of MoneyLaundering Act have made it immensely difficult for persons booked under them to secure bailForget its perceived failure to annul constitutionally borderline laws voices from within the legal fraternity have the people wonder whether the Supreme Court is insulated from political influence In January 2018 four seniormost judges of the Supreme Court in a press conference expressed their misgivings over then CJI Dipak Misra as the master of the roster allocating cases in which the Modi government had stakes to a particular benchFive years later the issue of allocation of cases to judges has resurfaced Senior Supreme Court Advocate Dushyant Dave recently wrote to Chief Justice D Y Chandrachud expressing concerns over cases being taken away from the judges before whom these had been earlier listed and who had even issued notices to the respondents read the Union government for their response These were then assigned to other benches Dave desisted from citing the cases or naming the judges in his letterCourtesy journalist Saurav Das we now know to which cases Dave may have been referring In an investigative piece Das identified as many as eight politically sensitive cases that were moved to the court of Justice Bela Trivedi in four months in violation of the rules laid down in the 2017 Supreme Court handbook The handbook says cases should be ldquoretainedrdquo before the senior judge to whom they were first assigned and in case of hisher unavailability listed before a judge hearing a similar caseI cite here two out of Dasrsquos eight examples The bail case of Mahesh Raut an accused in the Bhima Koregaon case was listed in September before Justice Aniruddha Bose who had earlier this year granted bail to Vernon Gonsalves and Arun Ferreira in the same case Bose is sixth in the seniority list of Supreme Court judges Trivedi sixteenth Yet two months later Rautrsquos case was shifted to Trivedirsquos courtLikewise the bail plea of Umar Khalid the youth leader booked under the UAPA is now in the court of Trivedi after it was shifted from Justice A S Bopanna who is seventh in the seniority list to Bose Trivedi was the law secretary in Gujarat when Narendra Modi was the chief minister there Das pointed out in his pieceThe judgment on Article 370 Daversquos letter and Dasrsquos story will make the seekers of justice wonder lsquoAre Supreme Court judges false godsrsquo This question will be partially answered with the impending Supreme Court judgment on electoral bondsThe writer is a senior journalistSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper