Judicial Overreach?

The recent events – sentencing of four Mid-Day journalists for exposing the alleged misuse of power by a former Chief Justice of India and the off-the-cuff remarks by Justice B.N. Agrawal that they would “recommend to the President to dismiss the DMK government in Tamil Nadu” are striking parables to the judicial overreach. 

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June 13, 2022
The recent events – sentencing of four Mid-Day journalists for exposing the alleged misuse of power by a former Chief Justice of India and the off-the-cuff remarks by Justice B.N. Agrawal that they would “recommend to the President to dismiss the DMK government in Tamil Nadu” are striking parables to the judicial overreach.
The Apex Court seems to be creating awe in the minds of political parties, the executive, the fourth-estate and the public alike – that Judiciary is sacrosanct and all other institutions are subservient to it.  But the judicial activism has opened the Pandora’s Box where scores of questions remain unanswered!  One wonders as to why the Supreme Court was tight-lipped when hundreds of people of a minority community were being slaughtered every day in Gujarat for over a month? Why the constitutional breakdown in the state then was not felt? And why did the Apex Court failed to punish even a single perpetrator of the Sikh riots 1984?  Why it cannot direct the Maharashtra government to take up the Srikrishna Commission report?  Is the judiciary so deep in slumber that there is no hope of seeing light at the end of the long tunnel to the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi dispute?   Today, courts are being sought after more by the accused rather than the aggrieved as cases can be dragged on for years on end.  The judiciary will command respect if it starts clearing the umpteen number of criminal and civil cases languishing in courts across the country.
Syed Sultan Mohiddin
Kadapa, A.P.