Adios, Mr. Chandrachud!
Adios, Mr. Chandrachud!
Posted on 9th November, 2024 (GMT 16:50 hrs)
ABSTRACT
The article bids farewell to Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, critiquing his tenure and decisions. It argues that he used judicial power to align with the political establishment rather than uphold independence and democratic rights. The piece highlights controversial rulings, his handling of specific cases, and contrasts Chandrachud’s image of a progressive judge with decisions allegedly detrimental to free speech and public welfare. It concludes with concern over the court’s trajectory under his leadership, questioning his legacy and the judiciary’s role in upholding democratic principles.
This Open Letter is Dedicated to Judge Loya, who allegedly succumbed to the onslaughts of the Hindutva Fascists
The Cartoon of the stabbed Indian Constitution shouting for “help” in the above poster is by noted Indian cartoonist Satish Acharya
O Thou Lord, Mr. Chandrachud,
As Ramlala Virajman has revealed his lordship through you, a mediator,
Who needs the court now, with juristic divinity declared so blatantly?
A dénégation of the grand design, self-proclaimed dalaal of the Gods!
Themis does not “see” anymore, even without a blindfold!
Just like the Gurus on their pulpit, the healers, whose mere presence
Turns hospitals obsolete, we stand blessed by the emissaries of Hindu Gods.
Only through prayers channeled by intermediaries like you and those Gurus,
Do we receive the ni-aksara Brahman’s decree—formless, without a single letter.
You, the grand middleman of the Hindu Gods, in league with the King of Lies,
Who campaigns for “Gautama,” building busy-ness in the name of international relations.
It is after all,
Cunning Business, business, business…
Dear Mr. Chandrachud,
Yes, we are no longer calling you “My Lord”. It is not only because of the fact that you have retired from your office, but also because of the reason that the majority of the judicial fraternity and the civil society representatives presently questions your very credibility as a Chief Justice of India, including eminent jurists such as Justice Markandey Katju, advocate Dushyant Dave, Justice Rekha Sharma, Justice Anjana Prakash, Justice Nagarathna, among so many others. Many Non-Godi Media journalists have walked along the same path by pointing at your stark ambivalences, steep deviations from “neutral” judicial practice and a growing inclination to favour the Saffron “rulers” of the Indian nation-state, directly or indirectly, purportedly to get creamy post-retirement placements. Moreover, one should dissociate oneself from such colonial terminological usage of “My Lord” and hereby individuatedly identify you as nothing over and above my fellow Indian citizen, Mr. Chandrachud.
This is an open farewell letter to you from the OBMA activists. It is being written in the spirit of constructive criticism, and to remind the Indian courts of their responsibilities in drawing a clear line between the judiciary and the executive. We recently saw you shedding crocodile tears by uttering “Forgive me if I ever hurt anyone” and “My Shoulders are broad enough to take criticism” (Both you and the 56’inch chested non-bio-logical man are bearing your own crosses by the scholastic approach that has made us remember Google Scholar’s tagline: Stand on the shoulders of giants), clearly showing how you are suffering from an evident guilt consciousness for having not always conformed to your prescribed judicial duties as well as ethical commitments as the CJI. This is the imbalanced zone of your complex personality that we are trying to critique (both positive and negative, perhaps) through this letter of ours.
First things first. What we want our readers to notice is your recent tendency to constantly remark (at least on two public occasions) that the apex judiciary does not play the role of the opposition in the parliament⤡, or does not exist to satisfy the opposition’s demands for that matter⤡. What we wish to question is your very line of reasoning in this context. You are entirely missing the point that it is not a question of whether you are siding with the government or the opposition in the course of deciding upon any judicial matter, but actually whether you are reclining with just morality and the robust rule of law or not.
The recent metamorphosis of “Lady Justice” (as you like to call her) in terms of her attire, seems to be pertaining to the cultural nationalist agenda of the BJP, while keeping the Constitution on one hand simply as a “show-off” to ward off the Opposition’s criticism (though without success, sadly!). The blindfold as a symbol of judicial independence or impartiality is no longer there because the judiciary now hankers after the governmental hegemony. Even without the blindfold, the lady justice is now actually blind to the real miseries or sufferings of the common citizens of the Indian republic, and only responds to the chosen few crony business tycoons and the ruling party aligned to their vested interests!
From the point of view of legal ethics, you have seriously been nothing more than a partisan, eulogizing agent for the crony government of India, while at the same time giving empty lip-services to project yourself to the media (you have been termed as the most media-savvy CJI that India has ever seen!) as a “progressive” person, a messianic persona (entailing the heroization of the individual agent), one who openly talks about queer rights, women’s rights, human rights in general and so on. However, it is beyond any doubt that when it comes to sincerely implementing these rights in the realpolitik, you are mute and without any substantial action. On the whole, you have made seventeen appointments to the Supreme Court of India, but not even one woman judge was appointed among them. Thus, something seems to be essentially “at fault” here when it comes to uniting the universes of your claimed theory and visible praxis. The rift between the two in your case is so wide that it taints your so-called “legacy” with nothing more than questions, criticisms and severe scepticism on the part of your conscious witnesses.
As Mr. Dave has pointed out:
“He’s like Indian cricketers, who are very successful in media. But when it comes to the test matches against New Zealand, they fail miserably. So, Chief Justice Chandrachud was a media’s favourite.“
When you assumed office as Chief Justice in October-November 2022, India’s pending cases stood at a staggering 4,50,36,071, according to National Judicial Data Grid. By the time you are departing in 2024, this backlog has grown to 51 million cases. Alarmingly, among these, over 180,000 cases have been pending across various courts for more than 30 years (whereas dissenters’ voices such as that of IPS officer Sanjiv Bhatt and Arundhati Roy are mercilessly silenced by citing several years old cases leading to imprisonment). Turning to the Supreme Court specifically, the case backlog was 69,647 when you took office; now, that figure has risen to 82,989. This raises a critical question: did you ever genuinely strive to expedite justice and address this mounting delay? Strikingly, what compelled you to open the Court at 1 AM after getting a call from an anonymous person to decide upon Teesta Setalvad’s release?
Certain “high-profile” as well as “controversial” cases and the decisions arrived at make us quiver in exasperation, given that we had so many grand expectations on your part at the time of your initiation to the office. You have time and again demeaned the levels expected of you, strikingly even before your tenure as the CJI.
We remember the Article 370 case, where the Bench headed by you did not bother to look over the other special provisions as preserved through the parallel Article 371, and instead misdirected itself in legal practice by abrogating something that was not supposed to be abrogated, as per the Constituent Assembly’s standpoint at the time of framing the Article. Both of these articles exist to uphold the indispensable relative autonomy, self-determination and preservation of indigenous cultures for these specific regions in a vastly diversified country like India. You and your judges did not even care to consider these aspects. In this way, the apex court ultimately served the BJP’s narrow political goals to territorialize Kashmir in their own manner, with increasing arrests of human rights activists, banning human rights organizations and journalists in the area.
Again, we recall the Electoral Bonds matter. Yes, you and your bench did deem it to be unconstitutional and stopped its further operations, but what about the penological attestation of those identified through the said exposé? No criminal proceedings were held till date in that regard. Why did not you have the guts to openly question the BJP for running such an opaque office of profit through their favoured crony capitalist channels? As Mr. Dave stated: “Well, what Supreme Court did was very clear. Operation successful, patient dead. There is no doubt about the fact that electoral bond was a scheme which may have been good, but it was seriously misused, especially by party in power.” You did not even entertain Mr. Prashant Bhushan’s plea to go deep into these allegations.
We also want you to recount the time when there was no independent inquiry to investigate Judge Loya’s “mysterious” death. What made you along with the other judges to not proceed with that? Are you, out of your “divine inspiration”, somehow engaged in a battle of narcissistic personalities characterized by the delusions of grandeur along with Mr. Narendra Modi, the self-proclaimed non-bio-logical man?
With regard to the ADM vs Jabalpur Case, you publicly announced that you disagreed with your father in the said judgement. The same was deemed to be a statement in the right direction; moreover, despite taking similar legitimate stands regarding the burning areas of homosexuality, adultery and Sabarimala issues, you have not been able to serve the “progressive” ideal that you claimed to have espoused so explicitly (even in the lectures delivered at the platforms of Oxford, Harvard and other esteemed institutions, even at the cost of missing your proceedings)1. You have ultimately paved the way to the regressive status quo to take hold of the situation instead of doing anything firm or resolute in these regards. Why did you simply “sail with the wind” as an apathetic conformist in these respects ultimately? We are sorry but we have to seriously judge you here, oh thou judge!
The same applies to your attitude to judicial reforms from “within”. In spite of making statements on restructuring the judiciary, you have not been able to resolve the high pendency of cases (as noted in the beginning), the vacancies and the political manipulation done thereof at the grassroots. What are you afraid of, Mr. Chandrachud?
You modified a previous three-judge ruling in the BCCI case, enabling Mr. Jay Shah to assume the role of BCCI Secretary (also note: Nita Ambani as a member of the International Olympic Association does not at all qualify for the role other than her close ties to the ruling BJP), even though the latter does not have the eligibility to occupy such a role other than being the son of the Home Affairs Minister of India with legal conflicts. You achieved this by ruling that the pooling of tenure would not apply in a specific way. This decision was made in a highly questionable manner, as it contradicted a three-judge judgment, which otherwise should not have been overridden. The outcome? Today, we have a cricket board selecting players who are prominent in the media but underperform on the field. Do you not have a share in this responsibility for making Indian cricket go ashtray?
In the well-known Hadiya case (2017-18), where a Hindu woman married a Muslim man, a Supreme Court bench led by the 44th Chief Justice Khehar and you ordered an NIA investigation into the marriage of a consenting adult. They kept her separated from her husband for several months. Ultimately, she appeared before the Supreme Court, asserting that she had married of her own free will and wished to live with her husband—leaving the Court red-faced, given that the Court should not have intervened in any such unfounded matter in the first place. The much-hyped “Love Jihad” done by the so-called “Anti-Romeo Squads” is an essentially religious extremist propaganda run by the BJP and its associates without any substantial basis that harms the secular fabric of our Constitution’s foundational values. What legacy does this leave you, Mr. Chandrachud, in going against the essential foundation of the Constitution?
The much-controversial and debated Ayodhya Ram Mandir Judgement, which is a non-signed signed document drafted by you (inspired by Ramlala?!), raises a host of contradictions that attack the pluralistic ethos of India further. It completely favoured the unjustified demolition of the Babri mosque by Hindutva goons (even at the cost of denying perceptually verified evidence that such a vandalism occurred at all), and made them “get their way” to consolidate an exclusivist temple-based narrative with no historical authenticity whatsoever. In 1920s Turkey, Kamal Atatürk set up a precedent by enabling the construction of a mosque and temple side by side—then why did not you and your judges adopt a similar approach, instead of allowing a temple to be built on a mosque’s demolition site itself? Again, this agenda was essentially fueled by BJP’s theocratic politics, to which the Supreme Court mercilessly submitted without a period of cross-examining, introspection and questioning (Oh, why are we talking about temples, mosques and churches— when HUNGER at its peak in India?!).
If we are to talk of the much-contested Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) case, you simply went ahead to “duck” it. Throughout your time as the CJI, you have avoided or bypassed such “politically sensitive” matters. Could not you have talked of the fundamental rights of the minorities in this context, which were seriously affected through the incoming of such a draconian act? Why did not you? Do you avoid confrontation deliberately to habitually appease the ruling party? What does it reveal about your selectively secretive, nearly opportunistic persona?
The Collegium System has experienced significant distortions during your tenure as Chief Justice of India, leading to increased governmental intervention. This has allowed the political executive to influence judicial appointments, prioritizing those favored by the ruling class, and further undermining the independence of the judiciary.
As alleged by Mr. Dave, you took another controversial step. When Justice Kaul’s bench was questioning the government on its delay in implementing the collegium’s recommendations, you pressed them, asking for a clear timeline on action. The government had been stalling on appointing certain judges, showing selective urgency by fast-tracking only those it favoured while leaving others pending. This delay seemed less about due process and more about control-manipulation-domination over judicial appointments, significantly affecting judicial integrity and transparency in the long run.
In this connection, we are quite aware of the instances where certain selected judges’ files were approved in under 12 hours. Justice Kaul’s bench had been pressing the government with these very questions—yet, you abruptly removed the case from your bench, a move that allegedly verged on contempt of court. As master of the roster, a Chief Justice has no power to withdraw a case that is already being heard by another existing bench. This act appeared to shield the present government from embarrassment, and therefore you owe the nation an explanation, especially amidst this ongoing direct criticism of your remarks, actions, perspectives and standpoints.
As Mr. Dave clarified:
“It [the removal of the case from your bench] was against every canon of judicial power being exercised. See, Chief Justice Chandrachud, when he exercises powers as master of the roaster, he’s not acting judicially.
He’s acting administratively. And administratively, he had no, authority, jurisdiction, business, or morality to really touch that matter. Period. So whatever he says, it would only further his serious dereliction of duty on that subject.”
Your remark that the Ganapati worship in Mr. Modi’s company was a “private event” is a very poor defence on your part, given that the media exposure involved therein made it a public issue, and also because the CJI and the sitting PM can only meet for official meetings alone as per the law. By saying that it does not harm the boundary between judiciary and executive, you are just projecting your utter vulnerability on the face of severe criticism even from your colleagues. The same goes for your Hindu temple visits wearing the Saffron robe, your “divine inspiration/revelation” in framing the Ayodhya judgement, your Hindu Saffron Flag remark, your “bhoomi pujan” (resembling 24X7 PM Modi’s anti-constitutional inauguration of the Ram Temple) for a SCI building and so on. We have to say that you have set a poor example, a dangerous precedent by being so shamelessly religiously inclined in the public sphere. Did not you learn or take cue from Justice Krishna Iyer’s private temple visits, or the Nehru-Rajendra Prasad debate regarding the latter’s Somnath Temple visit?
We are not even talking of the heinous R.G. Kar Rape and Murder, which still has not seen any kind of resolution under your alleged “just” leadership, how Bilkis Bano is still awaiting justice after 22 long years, how the BJP’s Prajwal Revanna and Brij Bhushan Singh are still moving around scot-free, how Gautam Adani has not been sentenced as an alleged “criminal” even after the consecutive Hindenburg reports, how no action was taken against the accused Election Officer in Chandigarh, how the SCI’s inaction during your term regarding the toppling of the elected Maharashtra government by a BJP-favoured faction raises concerns on the part of the Indian citizens, how the Bhima Koregaon activists are being harassed with the deployment of Pegasus software in the never-ending great Indian circus of custody and bail (Stan Swamy’s death and G. N. Saibaba’s failing health leading to his demise are two recent examples), how those convicted falsely under the UAPA such as Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam received not even a shred of concern or sympathy from your authority since you have deliberately avoided to take up such bail matters and instead allocated them to BJP-oriented Justice Bela M. Trivedi’s bench. and so on. The list seems to be endless and frustrating. The financially abused DHFL victims (given that the DHFL scam has been solely caused by the BJP’s profit-mongering motives), despite their repeated pleas, saw no action on their behalf on your part. Instead, superrich Mr. Ajay Piramal, the alleged adverse possessor of the DHFL and BJP’s close ally, received a “blanket” (?) stay order in his favour from the SCI under your term. Even when the DHFL victims took to RTI activism and reached the doorstep of the Supreme Court, they got no viable replies from the apex court. The decease and disease of the RTI as a democratic mechanism seems to be quite apparent now!
Since we referred to the DHFL scam, we must also take note of another event, mentioned by advocate Dushyant Dave. In a case involving a corporate entity and two feuding cousins, you took an unusual step by summoning the NCLAT members, including a retired high court judge, to your court, where they were not even provided seats. You reprimanded them for allegedly failing to implement your order, presuming them to be in contempt. This was, arguably, brinkmanship at its peak from the Supreme Court. Ironically, while you overturned their judgment, the favourable order obtained from the NCLAT had actually been procured; the NCLAT had held onto it for a year, only releasing it on the eve of a member’s retirement while the tribunal was on recess. One member was even pressured to resign following this intervention. What sort of future does this project in so far as the Indian judiciary is concerned?
In conclusion, we must mention how we are quite unbothered about your supposed “legacy” after going through these controversial spaces. After your few remarks across the past few weeks, you have tried to come up with very shaky justifications that have messed things up a notch even in a worse manner unfit for your claimed “reputation” as the CJI of the Supreme Court of the so-called “Mother of Democracies”.
In the end, we wish you a good post-retirement position under the patronization of the BJP, but do not be bothered about how history will view you. It will probably not even remember you.
Adieu Mr. Chandrachud as a persona, but we know that power continues, only knowledge disrupts!
Pardon our arrogance, at best.
Best,
A family of financially abused DHFL victims
On Behalf of Once in a Blue Moon Academia (OBMA)
ENDNOTES
- Since there has been a mention of Harvard University, we remember a particular incident. Harvard University removed two economics courses in 2011 taught by the then Indian BJP MP Subramanian Swamy after he published articles that were seen as “demonizing” Islam⤡. Thereby, Harvard preserved the Russellian spirit of agnosticism or atheistic rigour. Mr. Chandrachud, please remember this, given your religious inclinations! ↩︎
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