Judicial activism threat to democracy: CITU paper

Reached for his comments, CITU general secretary Chitabrata Majumdar said: ‘‘It was discussed at the meet. But it is not a final document. The conclusions will now be taken up at the All-India Conference to be held in Meghalaya in January next year.’’

The paper calls for an urgent plan to ‘‘effectively dispel the widespread belief that: (i) judiciary is superior to the other two organs of the state — legislature and executive — and (ii) it (the judiciary) functions strictly under the confine of statutes and that too impartially.’’

Such misplaced belief created illusion amongst the common people about the role of judiciary, it said and called for ‘‘mobilising the people in a massive scale against the anti-working class prejudice of the judiciary.’’

Asked if the paper did not amount to contempt of the judiciary, Majumdar said, ‘‘There are many things which the judiciary is doing. Just compare the SC order in the Chennai case saying employees had no right to strike and the recent one where it asked the government to release the salaries of striking doctors. So all these have to be discussed. It should not be taken as contempt of court.’’

Attributing the fall of the NDA government and the rise of the UPA with Left support to people’s frustration with anti-labour policies, the document says judiciary was now stepping in where the legislature had failed, ‘‘in suppressing the democratic rights of toiling people’’.

The paper went on to refer some of the ‘‘anti-labour’’ order of the SC. This includes the judgment in the Tamil Nadu Government employees’ case, which said there was no fundamental right to strike, Uttar Pradesh vs Jasbir Singh on non-payment of full backwage upon reinstament and another in which the SC set aside a Punjab and Haryana HC order saying ‘‘the principle of equal pay for equal work has no mechanical application in every case.’’

Referring to the last case it said, ‘‘without mincing words the apex court has admitted in clear terms that it has been influenced by the policy of globalisation.’’

To sum-up, the paper says, ‘‘The Supreme Court is resorting to an interpretation of laws in favour of the employers as it feels that the protection of the employees has to be given a go-by so as to render the working class totally defenceless in the face of inhuman exploitation under the regimes of liberalisation, globalistion and privatisation.’’