2017: Justice Karnan, triple talaq, privacy hogged limelight in SC
The Supreme Court dealt with ‘hostile’ high court judge C S Karnan and the issue of trust deficit among its judges in 2017 and delivered historic verdicts like banning triple talaq and gifting citizens the most cherished fundamental right of privacy.
The year also saw a judgement in the J Jayalalithaa graft case whereby her close aide Sasikala Natarajan was convicted and put behind bars which virtually created political upheavals in Tamil Nadu and a spilt in the AIADMK.
In yet another case in which the Centre courted controversy was the issue of forcible conversion of women in Kerala by linking it to “love jihad” in which NIA alleged that the marriage of 25-yearold woman Hadiya was a classic example of the concept in which it said that the man who married her was purportedly connected with terror group ISIS.
In the midst of all these developments, the verdicts cherished most by citizens and that hogged the international glare was the historydefining decisions by five judges trashing the 1,400year-old Islamic practice of triple talaq and the pathbreaking ruling by nine judges adding right to privacy as a fundamental right in the Constitution.
The top court which ruled that right to privacy was protected as an intrinsic part of right to life and personal liberty under Article 21, grappled throughout the year with yet another sensitive issue of Aaadhar having bearing on the privacy.
Though a five-judge constitution bench will examine if Aaadhar scheme violated privacy, it has been made clear that government notifications making national biometric identifier mandatory for various services and welfare schemes would not be enforced by extending the deadline to March 31, 2018.
Even before the judiciary could overcome from the Karnan episode, internal squabble among the judges of the apex court surfaced with the number two judge in the seniority, Justice J Chelameswar usurping the administrative function of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra in allocating and setting up the bench when CJI court was seized of the constitutional matters. The incident led to the constitution of five-judge bench which held as wrong the decision of Justice Chelameswar by holding that “chief justice is the master of the roster”.
The issue drew lot of media attention as an activist lawyer and an NGO had raised the issue of bribes being taken in the name of judges for favourable orders in a medical college matter.
Keeping aside the two sordid saga concerning the judges, the apex court, which in the year 2017 saw three Chief Justices – T S Thakur, J S Khehar and Dipak Misra – at the helm, delivered a plethora of path-breaking verdicts including the terming as corrupt practice the use of caste and religion in elections, notwithstanding the over use of Hindutva and soft-Hindutva cards in bitterly-fought recent Gujarat polls.–PTI