Court of last appeal

Judging is a lonely job and, if it is done right, does not make for great popularity. It is in fact — as US Supreme Court Judge Abe Fortas observed decades ago — as near a person can get to being an island. So if the former chief justice of the Punjab and Haryana high court, Justice B.K. Roy, feels isolated today, he can at least take consolation from the fact that he has tried to do his job well. By refusing to compromise on his drive to cleanse the judiciary of corruption he has reiterated the norm and reminded his colleagues on the bench about their ultimate responsibilities as guardians of the law.

There have been at least three occasions when Justice Roy actively courted unpopularity among his brother judges in the Punjab and Haryana high court. The first instance — which invited the unprecedented and unfortunate action of 25 out of 28 of them going on mass leave — was when he questioned two judges for accepting the free membership of a controversial golf club that was at that very point the subject of a high court case. On the second occasion, he moved to ensure that cases involving relatives of sitting judges were heard only by those who had no relatives practicing in court. Finally, as this newspaper has just reported, on his last day as chief justice of this high court, he ruled as unconstitutional the land allotment made by the Chandigarh administration for a law institute which had the sons of a sitting judge as its directors. Each of these three interventions was very obviously done with the view to ensuring greater transparency and accountability in judicial functioning.

The court is literally our last court of appeal at a time when corruption and malfeasance have come to mark every aspect of politics and society. It is the only agency that still has the power to check the overweening exercise of executive power, stand guard against any abuse of the Constitution, and oversee the health of institutions. It is only the court that can demand, for instance, that the CBI explain its action in closing the case involving the Taj Heritage Corridor scam. This demands, in turn, extraordinary credibility and transparency from the judicial fraternity. The efforts of judges like Justice B.K. Roy to help achieve this, therefore, deserve not just to be welcomed but actively supported.