Verdicts behind the faces

Bharucha: JMM, Jayalalithaa and Narmada dissent A bench comprising the three future Chief Justices, Kirpal, Pattanaik and Khare, prevented ...

Bharucha: JMM, Jayalalithaa and Narmada dissent

In the Jayalalithaa8217;s poll eligibility case, Bharucha said the people8217;s mandate cannot over-rule the Constitution

S.P. Bharucha8217;s six-month tenure as CJI is marked by his extraordinary drive to clear the docket of long-pending and far-reaching Constitution bench cases meaning, vital questions that need to be resolved by benches of five judges or more. Though a Constitution bench is normally set up only once in a while, Bharucha has made sure that one is in action three days a week. Result: Several landmark rulings such as the one delivered by his bench empowering litigants to challenge a Supreme Court judgment through a 8216;8216;curative petition8217;8217; if principles of natural justice have been violated.

Bharucha was part of the bench that shook the political establishment with the Jain hawala case. Subsequently, the same judge raised eyebrows by holding in the JMM case that bribe givers alone can be prosecuted as bribe takers enjoy constitutional immunity. This is seen as a weakness on his part to go more by the letter rather than the spirit of the law.

But his literalist approach earned him wide appreciation in some vital cases. For instance, when Bharucha pulled up the Karnataka Government in 2000 for negotiating with Veerappan to secure actor Raaj Kumar8217;s release. Or, when in 2001 he ruled that people8217;s mandate could not override Jayalalithaa8217;s legal disqualification caused by the two-year sentence that stood against her then.

Appointed to the bench for the first time in the Bombay high court in 1977, Bharucha has delivered some of the most famous dissenting judgments in the apex court in the Ayodhya, Narmada and Arundhati Roy cases. His latest intervention is in the Gujarat crisis as his bench issued notices to the Centre and the state Government on a PIL alleging their complicity in the communal violence.

Kirpal: Firm on Ayodhya, CNG

A bench comprising the three future Chief Justices, Kirpal, Pattanaik and Khare, prevented Shila Pujan on the acquired land in Ayodhya

BHARUCHA8217;S immediate successor, B.N. Kirpal too has a tenure of six months in the top job. Reputed to be a pragmatist, Kirpal has several pro-liberalisation judgments to his credit 8211; the most notable of which is in the Balco privatisation case where he held that courts be wary of interfering with economic policy decisions.

Kirpal has made a mark for his activism in environmental cases: enforcement of the CNG deadline in Delhi is a case in point. But he has also been panned by environmentalists for giving the go-ahead to the Narmada project.

Kirpal first hit the national headlines in 1985 when he, as a judge of the Delhi high court, was appointed to inquire into an early terrorist attack, Kanishka air crash in the Atlantic Ocean. He has recently been in the news for his rather forceful intervention in the Ayodhya crisis forbidding the VHP to perform Shila Pujan anywhere on the acquired land. Kirpal presently heads the 11-judge bench taking a fresh look at the special educational rights of minorities.

Pattanaik: sent Arundhati to jail

Arundhati Roy pleaded that Pattanaik should withdraw from the bench, which went on to convict and sentence her on the charge of contempt of court

G.B. Pattanaik will have the shortest tenure among the four Chief Justices of the year. He will assume office on November 8, 2002 and retire just 40 days later. A native of Orissa, Pattanaik was elevated to the Supreme Court in 1995 and has since acquired the reputation of being a strong judge. He gave evidence of that while presiding over the bench that convicted and sentenced author Arundhati Roy in a contempt case. He was also part of the bench that recently prevented Shila Pujan on the acquired land in Ayodhya.

Among his important judgments is the one that became a political issue in the recent Punjab election: the one-year ultimatum he gave to the Punjab government to complete the construction of the Sutlej-Yamuna-Link Canal and honour its long-pending commitment to Haryana. In another controversial verdict, Pattanaik8217;s bench dismissed all environmental objections to a hotel project undertaken by Lalit Suri on the coast of Goa. He also delivered a dissenting judgment in the Samata case holding that the bar on the alienation of land in a tribal area to a non-tribal person does not apply to the Government.

Khare: Indira Gandhi8217;s lawyer

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V.N. Khare, the last of the four Chief Justices of 2002, has the longest tenure among them 8211; 16 months. It begins on December 20 and extends till May 2, 2004. Khare made the news for the first time almost 30 years ago when he was among the lawyers representing Indira Gandhi in the election petition filed against her by Raj Narain in the Allahabad high court. Khare was part of the benches that dealt with Ayodhya and enforcement of the CNG deadline. Though he has been in the apex court since 1997, Khare does not have very many high profile judgments to his credit. One of his decisons considered important by lawyers relates to sales tax: He ruled that the transfer of the use of goods cannot be taxed more than once.