Impeach R M Lodha and H L Gokhale, judges of the Supreme Court

Mr President and other public servants at the helm of governance,

I am a free citizen of this country and I know by definition of the term democracy itself that all institutions of the government are subservient to the interests of its citizens. And if you want it on authority of supposedly better knowledgeable people this is what the National Commission to review the working of the Constitution (NCRWC) has said in its report, submitted to the Central Govt in 2002: 'the crucial failure is the innate resistance in governments and governmental processes to the fundamental article of democracy, viz. that all power and all authority flows from the people and that all public institutions are meant solely to serve the public interest. The assurance of the dignity of the individual enshrined in the preamble of the Constitution has remained unredeemed; From this fundamental breach of the constitutional faith flow almost all our present ills.  The first and the foremost need is to place the citizens of this country at center-stage and demonstrate this prioritization in all manifestation of governance'.

About the judiciary itself this Commission has recorded a scathing observation: 'Judicial system has not been able to meet even the modest expectations of the society.  Its delays and costs are frustrating, its processes slow and uncertain.  People are pushed to seek recourse to extra-legal methods for relief.  Trial system both on the civil and criminal side has utterly broken down.' Also, 'Thus we have arrived at a situation in the judicial administration where courts are deemed to exist for judges and lawyers and not for the public seeking justice'.

Now coming to the issue of R M Lodha and H L Gokhale, judges who had  denied justice to the former Chief of Army Staff, Gen  V K Singh, in his simple case of date of birth and in doing so brought disrepute to the honourable institutions of justice in the whole country and defamed the nation itself in the eyes of the whole world!

Now the case of DoB of Gen V K Singh as I have understood from the reports published in a plethora of media is as follows.

Gen V K Singh was born son of an army officer in a military hospital (at Pune!). When he was awaiting results of his matriculation exam, he applied for admission to National Defence Academy. The application had been filled in by his teacher and there was an inadvertent error in his date of birth. (In any case the date on an application has no sanctity unless supported by the relevant supporting documents. and we do not need any court to tell us otherwise!) Neither the supporting documents submitted then nor the matriculation certificate submitted later, supported the wrong entry in the application. In any case the matter stood resolved as even the identity card issued to then 2nd Lt V K Singh, while passing out of the Indian  Military Academy, had the correct DoB. And there were no problems with this correct DoB till one Joginder Singh took over as Chief of Army Staff. (I will not go into the malafides discernable in the developments thereafter because it is irrelevant for the moment.)

And then we hear the unheard of thing: of V K Singh being called on the eve of his next promotion and made to sign a document accepting a different DoB (to be precise the wrong DoB entered in his application for admission to NDA!) as his actual DoB! This is being held by most readers against V K Singh on grounds of moral courage. But I am sure you must also have heard of the proverb- one does not hunt mad dogs with chivalry. Anyhow, V K Singh is reported to have signed the acceptance agreement conditionally, that is, he will accept the decision of the superior authority (whether it is the COAS or the Govt, is not clear but is irrelevant) if it is in the national interest! And this is where the hitch lies. The billion dollar question is : what is the national interest in retiring a COAS before his actual due date and installing his successor through an yet unheard of 'succession plan'? Your attention is invited to my blog 'WILL THE ARMY CHIEF GET JUSTICE?' posted at http://raviforjustice.blogspot.in/2012/01/will-army-chief-get-justice.html on  Friday, 20 January 2012.

That he was ultimately denied justice is now history. And the articulation of this injustice by him now is no reason for hauling him up for contempt of court. This actually amounts to intimidation and terrorisation of an upright, honest and patriotic citizen by those public servants who have been unwarrantedly given privileges and authorities beyond that what is required to perform the tasks assigned to them. The only justification for contempt of court to exist on our statutes is to haul up those who wilfully fail to abide by court decisions. But can we count the number of cases where such a positive use has been made by our courts? In Kerala, it was the High Court that declared bandhs illegal. It was upheld by the apex court. I have also read about political parties in Mumbai being penalised for organising bandhs. But in Kerala itself while the public are being put to untold misery by the oft declared hartals which are only a different brand name for the same bandhs, so far no political party has been penalised for such an illegal activity! And then again the high court goes and bans road side meetings also! This is presently on appeal in the apex court. But what does the police do in the meanwhile? Let the political parties do whatever they want and frame cases against small aggrieved groups protesting to bring their grievances before the higher authorities when everything else has failed!

The list of failures of the courts, amounting to serious crimes in themselves, do not end there. Delays, failure to do deliver justice even at the end of criminal delays, corruption, arbitrariness etc are passe in our courts. We have seen K G Balakrishan, as the CJI, declaring illegally that the office of the CJI is exempt from the purview of the RTI Act. Thanks to the simplicity and clarity, this is one law that can be easily understood and interpreted correctly even by a citizen who has studied upto 5th standard. But even this law has been subverted by none other than the information commissioners and the judiciary. It is the judiciary that has set the wrong example of demanding exorbitant fees along with the application and towards cost of information offered also. It is the judiciary which has introduced forms for application and 1st appeal. It is only the judiciary which has introduced fees for 1st appeal when it is actually only an additional opportunity given to the public authority to correct any omissions and commissions of its PIO. And when the whole judicial proceedings is supposed to be in public domain, even copies of judicial orders are denied by its PIOs!

Now here are a few quotes on our judiciary compiled by me and posted as a blog 'Indian judiciary-who said what' at
http://raviforjustice.blogspot.com/2011/05/indian-judiciary-who-said-what.html

Your attention is also invited to my online petition, addressed to the President and PM of India to constitute a National Judicial Commission to try and punish guilty judges as per laws applicable to ordinary citizen, at http://www.petitiononline.com/jrandac1/petition.html

Let me conclude by quoting from the report of the NCRWC itself.

This what Dr Subash Kashyap has written about the report: 'While no comments are being made on what went wrong in the procedure, priorities and perspective, it may be put on record that several of the recommendations now forming part of the report go directly counter to the clear decisions of the Commission on which the unanimously adopted draft report of the Drafting and Editorial Committee was based'.

Ms Sumithra Kulkarni drove-in the last nails, thus:

1. I believe in a Unified and truly Secular India.  However, the Commission debates seemed often to reduce the Constitution to being a platform for divisiveness and not unification.

2. The Commission did not initiate or promote sincere debate in the public with regards to the issues that it was contemplating.  The efforts was more to "evade and defer" instead of to "identify issues, table them for debate and to deal with them".

Now Subash Kashyap and Sumithra Kulkarni were the minority, non-judicial members of the 11 member commission, headed by former CJI M N Venkatachaliah and whose 6 members were from the judiciary! The other members of the Commission were B.P. Jeevan Reddy, R.S. Sarkaria and Kottapalli Punnayya (judges of apex/high courts), Soli J. Sorabjee and K. Parasaran (advocates), P.A.Sangma and Sumitra G. Kulkarni (political nominees), Dr.Subhash C. Kashyap and Dr. Abid Hussain ( bureaucrats) and just C.R. Irani, representative from the media!

Yours truly,

P M Ravindran

'Aathira', Kalpathy-678003

Tel: 0491-2576042