How Kiren Rijiju’s tussle with judiciary played out in Mumbai over last six months

In the battle that played out through the speeches and court proceedings in Mumbai since November last year, Rijiju took on the judiciary on several issues and received a response from the judiciary.

On November 4, stating that the collegium system of appointing judges is “opaque” and “not accountable”, Rijiju said he had to work with the present system until the government came up with an alternative mechanism.

On December 14, Rijiju said in Parliament that if the Supreme Court “starts hearing bail applications…all frivolous PILs” it would add “a lot of extra burden on the court”.

In response, while delivering the Ashok H Desai memorial lecture, organised by the Bombay Bar Association in Mumbai, Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud on December 17 stated that citizens can have confidence in judges to be “guardians” of (their) liberties and reiterated that “no case is big or small for the courts, be it the district courts, high courts or the Supreme Court”.

CJI Chandrachud’s comment came a day after a bench of the apex court led by him remarked that “it is in the seemingly small and routine matters involving grievances of citizens that issues of the moment, both in jurisprudential and constitutional terms, emerge”.

On January 21, days after Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar questioned the basic structure doctrine, as laid down by the Supreme Court in the 1973 Kesavananda Bharati case, CJI D Y Chandrachud said in Mumbai that it was “like the north star,” providing invaluable guidance for the interpretation of the Constitution.

A month later, terming Rijiju’s remarks against the collegium system for appointing judges as a “diatribe”, former Supreme Court judge Rohinton Fali Nariman said in Mumbai that if the last bastion of the independent judiciary fell, the country would enter the “abyss of a new dark age”. Nariman, who was part of the Supreme Court collegium before retiring from the apex court in August 2021, also said that “sitting on names” recommended by the collegium was “deadly against democracy”.

Meanwhile, a lawyers’ organisation had filed a PIL petition in the Bombay High Court seeking action against Rijiju and Vice President Dhankhar over their public comments “showing lack of faith in the Constitution by attacking institutions, including the Supreme Court”.

However, a bench of Acting Chief Justice Sanjay V Gangapurwala dismissed the plea observing that “the credibility of Supreme Court of India is sky high and it cannot be eroded or impinged by the statements of individuals”.

The bench noted that the constitutional authorities cannot be removed by the court as suggested by the petitioner and that “fair criticism of the judgment is permissible”, adding that it was a “fundamental duty of every citizen to abide by the Constitution” and to “respect the majesty of law”.

On May 2, Rijiju, while addressing an event organised by the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa in Mumbai, said the Centre had not done anything to undermine the independence and authority of the judiciary ever since Narendra Modi became prime minister.

Asked whether the government was interfering in the functioning of the judiciary, Rijiju remarked on a lighter note that the question that should be asked was whether the judiciary was interfering in the government’s work.

On May 15, a Supreme Court bench led by Justice S K Kaul dismissed an appeal filed by the Bombay Lawyers Association against the high court order on its PIL against comments by Dhankhar and Rijiju.

The apex court upheld the Bombay high court’s view. “If any authority has made an inappropriate observation, then the shoulders of the Supreme Court are broad enough to deal with the same, is the correct view,” it said.