A S Anand should have distanced self from bench -- Jethmalani

A S Anand should have distanced self from bench -- Jethmalani
PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

NEW DELHI, SEPT 10: Former law minister Ram Jethmalani today severely criticised the Chief Justice of India A S Anand for passing strictures against him for his views in the Bal Thackeray case at the time when he was having a fight with him on the appointment of the MRTPC chairman.

"It was very wrong on the Chief Justice's part and he should have reclused himself from the bench," Jethmalani told PTI in an interview.

Returning to the Capital after a month-long stay abroad, Jethmalani, who was asked to resign on June 22 a day after he reacted sharply to Chief Justice A S Anand's remarks during the hearing of a petition on implementation of the Srikrishna Commission report on the Mumbai riots, said he could not take those "remarks lying down, not even from the Chief Justice."

"When he (CJI) wanted to make an observation against me, and on the administrative side he is having a big fight so much so that he writes to the Prime Minister that your law Minister is impertinent, then he should not have sat on the bench and made those observations," Jethmalani said while recounting the sequence that led to his sacking.

He said, "I had made no comments on the case before the Supreme Court to invite such critical comment. I had only said the action in arresting Bal Thackeray for a specific offence in respect of a specific Article under a specific provision committed by him seven years ago is time-barred."

This should not have angered the Chief Justice, Jethmalani said, adding he had discussed the appointment of retired judge B M Lal as MRTPC chairman with Justice Anand personally and it seemed he had no reservations against him.

"But when I requested him to fix a time to administer oath to the new chairman, he wrote a letter to me saying that no formal consultation has been done," the former law minister said, adding he had clarified to him during a meeting that no consultation was required when a retired judge was appointed to the post and that there was no previous convention.

Referring to his meeting with CJI over the appointment of Justice Lal, Jethmalani asked what else could be consultation.

"Is there a prescribed method of consultation between two rational people? And were we playing chess till that date?" an angry Jethmalani queried.

He indicated that the Chief Justice might have taken offence on being told that the rulings he cited in favour of mandatory consultation did not apply in this case and that there was no convention of consulting him in case of appointment of a retired judge as MRTPC chairman.

Jethmalani, however, maintained that in the whole controversy, it was Attorney General Soli Sorabjee who should bear the maximum burden.

He said as Government's law officer, he should have submitted before the bench that the comments against the minister were not proper. Instead, Sorabjee sort of "tried to hit me by encouraging the court", saying that he shared its concern.

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The bench referring to Jethmalani's comment had observed"was the Minister aware that there was something called collective responsibility" and went on to ask "does this behove of a civilised government."

Asked for his reaction on the strong observations made bythe supreme court in the veerappan case where it had even told a democratically elected government to quit if it could not provide security to the people, Jethmalani said "it is a debatable issue which has to be tackled properly."

He said the supreme court itself has said that itsobservations were not judgements and were not to be taken seriously as they reflected the loud thinking on the part of the judges which were tentative and liable to be changed.

However, the former law Minister said but these remarkscould hurt and a layman did not know how to distinguish the observations from the judgements.

"Hence, it creates an obligation on the judges to becareful while making remarks during the hearing of a case," he said.

At the same time he said one could not avoid some remarkfrom the judges in the course of the arguments without which it would be difficult for the advocate to address the court without knowing the mind of the judges.