Judiciary to rescue; but it must watch CBI carefully
If we, as a society, are beholden to the wisdom of the judiciary it is a clear sign that we often need to be extricated from bad politics stemming from poor leadership. There were three instances during the week when pronouncements in courts demonstrated how much help was needed to restore common sense in dire situations created by political wrangling. The first came in West Bengal where the rulers were reluctant so much as to admit that political violence is endemic in the state and which reared its head in extreme forms in the aftermath of the hotly contested Assembly elections. The high court order for a CBI investigation into not only the political murders that took place but also into allegations of gangrapes is to be welcomed.
The need for a thorough probe could not have been denied except on partisan political considerations. It was incongruous that while the West Bengal government thought it fit to order a commission of inquiry into a national scandal of possible spyware use against Indian citizens by a Union government agency it would not countenance any kind of probe into widespread incidents of political violence in which so many citizens seem to have been targeted and in which connection multiple petitions were filed in court. The CBI will conduct a court-monitored investigation into all murder cases and crimes against women while all other cases are to be investigated by an SIT comprising three West Bengal police officers.
It is another matter that the CBI, nicknamed the “caged parrot” by the Supreme Court, should have earned just that reputation of doing the bidding of its political masters, nominally the department of personnel and training (DoPT) but always in the sway of rulers at the Centre. The hope is that it will investigate the unseemly happenings of political bloodletting in West Bengal in non-partisan manner if only because the high court will be monitoring its work. Coincidentally, only this week the Madras high court was wondering how the CBI could be made an independent statutory body like the EC or CAG and accountable only to Parliament and not the executive.
In Gujarat, the high court, in an interim order, struck down six sections of the so-called “love jihad” law, which is fundamentally flawed because of its motivated political origins and the needless remit it assumes even in the normal course of adults wishing to marry adults belonging to a different faith. A section of The Gujarat Freedom of Religion Act placing the burden of proof on the accused runs contrary to the laws of the land governing evidence and had to go. Where there is no evidence of coercion or fraud by way of intended religious conversions, such marriages between adults exercising free consent are perfectly legal and yet courts, particularly the Allahabad high court, have had to periodically intervene to uphold the rights of couples.
Judicial intervention has become the new normal to root out the excesses of the nation’s political divisions, which are in a state of unprecedented divisiveness that not only threatens societal and communal harmony but sometimes also sows disaffection. It should be considered fortunate then that the judiciary should be rooted in reason as to see through political partisanship and rule in a manner to uphold what is right and lawful.
The first came in West Bengal where the rulers were reluctant so much as to admit that political violence is endemic in the state