Apex court "fails" to inquire into allegations against top HC judge with RSS background: SC advocate Prashant Bhushan

Justice Hemant Gupta, Prashant Bhushan

By Our Representative
Top Supreme Court advocate Prashant Bhushan has regretted that, despite his complaint to the chief justice of India on March 3, 2017, against the former acting chief justice of Patna High Court Justice Hemant Gupta on allegations of “money laundering, acquiring properties by illegal means, possessing disproportionate assets”, no action has been taken by the top Indian judiciary.
Bhushan, in a statement as convener of the NGO Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR), says, instead, Justice Gupta “has been promoted as the regular Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court without any enquiry into the charges.”
Bhushan says, he has learnt that Government of India, too, was “seriously interested in the promotion of Justice Gupta who comes from an influential RSS background”, he adds, “The failure of the Chief Justice of India to constitute an in-house enquiry against Justice Gupta shows the futility of this in-house procedure”, about which a decision was taken way back in 1997.
Those who are attached with CJAR include former Justices PB Sawant and Justice H Suresh, veteran advocate Shanti Bhushan, well-known writer Arundhati Roy, senior advocate Mihir Desai, journalist Manoj Mitta, and several social workers and experts like Nikhil Dey, Annie Raja, Madhuresh Kumar, Vijayan MJ, Harish Narasappa, Koninika Ray, and Anjali Bharadwaj.
Accusing Justice Gupta of “seeking to influence” a officer of the Enforcement Directonrate (ED), Government of India, which was investigating the charges after submitting a “scathing” report, Bhushan says, the ED officer was asked “to come and meet him to resolve the matter”, yet “no such in-house enquiry appears to have been set up, despite a further reminder dated March 27, 2017 to the Chief Justice of India.”
Claiming that there is “considerable evidence” of the charges, including a “taped conversation between the Justice Gupta and the ED officer”, Bhushan recalls, a chief justices conference in 1997 “decided that an in-house procedure for investigating charges against sitting judges would be devised, in which the Chief Justice of India would constitute a committee of two Chief Justices of the High Court, and another High Court judge.”
The case shows, says Bhushan, that “often Chief Justices’ act on subjective considerations and on the basis of his own personal equations with the judge concerned”, adding, this underscoring “the need for putting in place a permanent full time commission, which is independent of the government and the judiciary, for investigating complaints against judges and taking action against erring judges.”
Pointing out that the need for such a commission has also been underlined recently by Justices Chelameshwar and Gogoi in their separate judgment in Justice Karnan’s case, Bhushan underlines, “Unfortunately, in the absence of such an independent mechanism, the only available resort is impeachment which is a political process.”
Insisting that impeachment should be “resorted to in some extreme cases”, Bhushan says, Justice Gupta’s “is a fit case for commencement of impeachment proceedings and we urge leaders of all political parties to come together to initiate this process to protect the integrity of the judiciary.”

Comments

India’s climate tech ecosystem in dire need of both early, growth-stage funding: Report

By Our Representative India’s climate tech ecosystem, which boasts over 800 startups, is in dire need of both early and growth-stage funding to leverage its full potential, according to a report by Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad (Ventures) and MUFG Bank , Japan. Despite a robust initial funding landscape, with approximately two-thirds of climate tech startups receiving seed capital, growth-stage investments remain critically lacking.

'Flawed' argument: Gandhi had minimal role, naval mutinies alone led to Independence

Counterview Desk Reacting to a Counterview story , "Rewiring history? Bose, not Gandhi, was real Father of Nation: British PM Attlee 'cited'" (January 26, 2016), an avid reader has forwarded reaction in the form of a link , which carries the article "Did Atlee say Gandhi had minimal role in Independence? #FactCheck", published in the site satyagrahis.in. The satyagraha.in article seeks to debunk the view, reported in the Counterview story, taken by retired army officer GD Bakshi in his book, “Bose: An Indian Samurai”, which claims that Gandhiji had a minimal role to play in India's freedom struggle, and that it was Netaji who played the crucial role. We reproduce the satyagraha.in article here. Text: Nowadays it is said by many MK Gandhi critics that Clement Atlee made a statement in which he said Gandhi has ‘minimal’ role in India's independence and gave credit to naval mutinies and with this statement, they concluded the whole freedom struggle.

Swami Vivekananda's views on caste and sexuality were 'painfully' regressive

By Bhaskar Sur* Swami Vivekananda now belongs more to the modern Hindu mythology than reality. It makes a daunting job to discover the real human being who knew unemployment, humiliation of losing a teaching job for 'incompetence', longed in vain for the bliss of a happy conjugal life only to suffer the consequent frustration.

A Hindu alternative to Valentine's Day? 'Shiv-Parvati was first love marriage in Universe'

By Rajiv Shah* The other day, I was searching on Google a quote on Maha Shivratri which I wanted to send to someone, a confirmed Shiv Bhakt, quite close to me -- with an underlying message to act positively instead of being negative. On top of the search, I chanced upon an article in, imagine!, a Nashik Corporation site which offered me something very unusual.

UNEP report on how climate crisis is impacting displacement, global conflicts, declining health

By Shankar Sharma* A recent report by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), titled "A Global Foresight Report on Planetary Health and Human Wellbeing," warrants urgent attention from our country’s developmental perspective. The findings, detailed in the report, should be a source of significant concern not only globally but especially for our nation, which has a vast population and limited natural resources.

Industries fueling climate crisis draining public funds in Global South: ActionAid

By Our Representative A new ActionAid report has exposed the alarming financial drain on the Global South, as climate-wrecking industries like fossil fuels and industrial agriculture receive over US$600 billion annually in public subsidies. The report, "How the Finance Flows: Corporate Capture of Public Finance Fuelling the Climate Crisis in the Global South", reveals that an average of US$677 billion in public finance is directed toward climate-destructive sectors each year, depriving crucial social sectors such as education.

75 years of revolution: How China moved away from ideals of struggle for human liberation

By Harsh Thakor* On October 1st, we celebrate the 75th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, a pivotal moment in the struggle for human liberation. From 1949 to 1976, China achieved remarkable social equality and revolutionary democracy, outpacing other developing nations in literacy, health care, agricultural output, and industrial production.

Will Bangladesh go Egypt way, where military ruler is in power for a decade?

By Vijay Prashad* The day after former Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina left Dhaka, I was on the phone with a friend who had spent some time on the streets that day. He told me about the atmosphere in Dhaka, how people with little previous political experience had joined in the large protests alongside the students—who seemed to be leading the agitation. I asked him about the political infrastructure of the students and about their political orientation. He said that the protests seemed well-organized and that the students had escalated their demands from an end to certain quotas for government jobs to an end to the government of Sheikh Hasina. Even hours before she left the country, it did not seem that this would be the outcome.

105,000 sign protest petition, allege Nestlé’s 'double standard' over added sugar in baby food

By Kritischer Konsum* 105,000 people have signed a petition calling on Nestlé to stop adding sugar to its baby food products marketed in lower-income countries. It was handed over today at the multinational’s headquarters in Vevey, where the NGOs Public Eye, IBFAN and EKO dumped the symbolic equivalent of 10 million sugar cubes, representing the added sugar consumed each day by babies fed with Cerelac cereals. In Switzerland, such products are sold with no added sugar. The leading baby food corporation must put an end to this harmful double standard.

Search This Blog