Every right matters, must strike a balance: CJI Misra
PUNE: Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, who was part of the five-member constitution bench that decriminalised consensual gay sex this week, on Saturday said “balancing of rights” is sometimes a difficult task.
While in a democratic set-up every right matters, no right is absolute, Misra said during a speech, as part of the Dr Patangrao Kadam Memorial Public Lecture Series, at Bharti Vidyapeeth in Pune.
“There is no hierarchical order in rights. A particular fundamental right cannot exist in isolation,” he said, adding that everyone has the right to speak out but no one can use this right for defamation purposes.
On the conflict between two fundamental rights, the CJI said the judgment in such cases should be based on the facts of the case and the fundamental structure of the Constitution. He gave examples of the euthanasia case, which he had heard with four other Supreme Court judges, to demonstrate the conflict between two fundamental rights and how they can be balanced.
The court earlier this year had recognised a “living will” by a terminally ill patient for passive euthanasia while laying down guidelines on who would execute the will and how the nod for passive euthanasia will be granted by a medical board.
“Everyone has a ‘right to life’ but at the same time he or she has a right to life with dignity. If he is unable to live with dignity because of prolonged illness, from which he/she will not overcome, then in such cases he/she has right to die with dignity. This is what balancing of rights means,” Misra said.
The CJI said adjustment, acceptance, compromise and settlement come in the ‘balancing of rights’ and for co-existence of rights “we have to balance them for the well-being of mankind”.
The lecture was attended by Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis, Supreme Court justice AM Khanwilkar, acting chief justice of Bombay high court Naresh Patil, the chancellor of Bharati Vidyapeeth Shivajirao Kadam and the secretary of Bharati Vidyapeeth Vishwajeet Kadam.