‘Tremendous satisfaction in giving nod’
NEW DELHI: It is “tremendously satisfying” to be a judge when you can deliver a judgment making women equal contributors to growth and safety of the nation, said Supreme Court judge Dhananjay Y Chandrachud on Tuesday, citing his February 2020 verdict that gave permanent commission to women in the armed forces.
“I can very well remember authoring this judgment and delivering it just before the lockdown. When I can see 365 women officers granted permanent commission and there are more officers who are going to get it exactly after a year of this judgment, there is a great sense of satisfaction for a judge,” said justice Chandrachud.
Constituting the bench along with justice MR Shah, justice Chandrachud added: “There is tremendous amount of satisfaction of being a judge. With the assistance and the vision of lawyers, we could deliver a judgment which led to opening up of more public spaces for women, making them equal contributors to growth and safety of the nation.”
The judge further said: “Yes, you do a lot of routine work every day; you do exactly the same kind of work almost every day; your routine from morning to evening is almost the same, but I have no second thought about why I chose to be a judge.
I guess judgeship is something that grows on you”.
Justice Shah agreed: “I also have great satisfaction that you have done something for the society as a judge. As a lawyer, you have to mostly worry about the interest of your clients. I can remember when an order of mine in the Gujarat high court helped 23,500 retired primary teachers get the benefit of revised pension. Days later, I got a letter addressed to me from a remote village with only one sentence written: Justice is still alive.”
The justice Chandrachud-led bench was hearing a clutch of petitions by around 60 women army officers who have complained against fixing of allegedly arbitrary criteria to deny them permanent commission when the judges and the lawyers had a brief exchange about “role reversal”.
Following arguments spanning three hours, additional solicitor general Sanjay Jain and senior counsel R Balasubramaniam, who represented the ministry of defence (MoD) in the matter, took a brief break from the submission and asked the judges if they missed being lawyers.
Justice Chandrachud replied saying although lawyers had greater freedom than judges did, he would not have second thoughts about being a judge.
With senior advocate Huzefa Ahmadi appearing for one of the women officers, the judge also recalled an episode from 1997 when he went to meet Huzefa’s father, former Chief Justice of India AM Ahmadi at his hotel room in Mumbai after an arbitration case. Referring to his conversations with some young lawyers, justice Chandrachud said that a lot of young counsel were worried about the constant grind of being a judge.
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NEW DELHI : A Delhi court on Wednesday stayed the operation of search warrants issued against advocate Mehmood Pracha, who is representing some of the accused in the cases related to the riots that took place in the national capital last year.
Pracha’s office was raided by the Delhi Police on Tuesday in connection with an FIR alleging that the advocate tutored a witness to initiate a false rots case.
Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Pankaj Sharma, who passed the directions on an application filed by Pracha, said
“till the pendency of this application, the search warrants issued against the applicant is stayed.” The court reserved its order for March 12 on the advocate’s plea which has also sought a direction to the police to retrieve only the relevant information from his hard disk in the presence of a Magistrate. Pracha said that a soft copy of the materials was as good as a hard copy under the Information Technology Act.