Legal perspective

There are, of course, many lessons that could be learnt. For one, the judiciary is never an exhibitionist. A pandal being constructed with public money in the same style as those having unearned illegal income constructing a Taj Mahal to celebrate a marriage in the family goes against this principle. There is also no statement fromthe highest court as to who will be accountable for the public money spent on the construction already done.

The Supreme Court is a national institution for public service. The pandal function ended because of a fight over who would sit on the dias with the judges. It was not because of human suffering in Orissa, that the project failed, or even because lakhs of rupees of public money were being frittered away without creating a lasting asset for the public.

Judges, individually, did contribute more than a third of their mo-nth8217;s salary to the Orissa calamity fund. But still missing is the institutional response to utilising the celebration funds for some worthy social cause like that of the disabled or orphaned. Yet addressing ca-uses like these is the proclaimed objective of the national legal aid programme run by the apex court.

There is also a desperate need for the apex court to have a holistic understanding of the effects of modernisation on the constitutional rights of the majority of Indianspeople who never enter a court or for whom the language of the courts is wholly alien. This understanding is part of its constitutional role to act as a sentinel of the rights of the people.

The apex court is an open institution and its 50 years of existence should be a matter of national introspection and celebration. The organisation of the celebration has been a secretive affair. The country8217;s great men and women, in fields like the sciences and the arts, are being studiously ignored. The occasion should have provided an opportunity to sent out a message to the nation, that the apex court is not only for lawyers and judges. But instead of bringing in people from other fields, even leading lawyers and judges were kept out, especially those who combined learning with simplicity and integrity.

Then there is the need to make a distinction between a bar leaders-hip that actually serves advocates and one that does not. Only the former must be given representation. Over the years, senior advocatescontrolling legal business have come to control the SCBA through an electoral process that has put elections beyond the financial reach of ordinary advocates. The AORs we-re the underdogs. Gradually, the AORs learnt from the seniors and beat them at their own game of legal business and court management. Today, in terms of functions, advocate and judge participation, openness of decision making, the AORs has virtually eclipsed the SCBA. Senior advocates have come to have a vice-like control over the arbitrary distribution of government legal business. But the AORs, having upstaged the SCBA, now claims its rightful representation even on the judges8217; dias.

But what powerful judges in judicial administration need to recognise is that ordinary, hard working, honest advocates and those among their own colleagues who display similar values, are the best bet. A national institution cannot reflect iron in its soul by being dominated by a few judges and lawyers.

There is another principle to be considered. Insupervising the various tasks concerning the institution, the lawyers selected must be ones with a genuine record of public service. Selecting lawyers merely because they have been or are holders of some title is to be blind to the reality of how most lawyers get to important positions. As in national politics, elected leaders do not necessarily reflect their constituents8217; wishes or thinking. Other title holders generally represent deeply-entrenched business lobbies.

The result is that judges get advice from such lawyers who reflect hidden agendas. The SCBA and the AORs, instead competing with each other to demonstrate the public service aspect of the Supreme Court, got into a debate that has nothing to do either with the institution or the citizen.Until that debate took place, the judges did not have any notion of the strong resentment in the bar against the pandal. Another situation of playing favourites during the Vigyan Bhawan function on November 26 is building up on the issue of entry cards which thejudges have allowed to be distributed through the SCBA and the AORs. There is a third body in the apex court, the SC Non-AOR Association which has been forgotten in the din, although it was recognised for the distribution of lawyers8217; chambers. This game with public funds can go on endlessly. For the moment the celebrations have forgotten the citizen.