 Respect to Justice Gopal Gauda and other dignitaries who are panellists in this discussion, and my dear friends of the legal fraternity and concerned citizens. As you've heard from Sri Sondarji, I'm a last-minute substitute and a poor substitute for Comrade Sitaram. He is unable to be here, but he sent you his warm regards and best wishes and congratulations. There's a medical emergency of a close relative, so he could not be present. I would like to congratulate the All-India Lawyers Union for organizing this discussion on what I believe is an extremely relevant and pertinent and urgent issue today. And I also believe that taking both these issues together, judicial accountability and judicial independence, and to see them as one concept interlinked with each other in a wider framework of the constitutional provision of the separation of the executive and the judiciary, is extremely important for all of us today. I'm afraid because of the short notice I don't have a written paper to present, but since we have been very concerned with these issues, and my party both in Parliament and outside has been campaigning on both these issues, I will very briefly put our position, although I would like to state that I believe that this is not an issue just for political parties or for those represented in Parliament and not only just an issue for the legal fraternity who are more directly involved in that sense. But certainly I think today that for every citizen of this country, across caste, class, community and gender, for every citizen of this country, there is a deep and growing concern as to what is happening to our institutions and what is happening to the basic guarantees of autonomy and independence which are essential and intrinsic to certain institutions which have a constitutional mandate to act as a watchdog for the rights of we the people of India. And therefore when we discuss judicial accountability and independence, we also have to place it in the current context. It is not my purpose today to make it into a very politically partisan discussion because there are certain basic issues which I think as citizens of India we have experienced in various ways the dilution and sometimes the destruction of institutions including the judiciary. And although today we are talking of a specific context, we have to also look back into our history and see how the executive at various times has attacked the judiciary, has attacked Parliament, has attacked civil liberties and we have all had the experience of what happened during the emergency. So it is not as though this is something which is suddenly come up before Indian citizens in the country or it is only because of a specific situation which exists today. However it must be said that today the ruling regime and its approach towards all institutions marks a qualitative difference in what we have as citizens of India experienced in the form of attacks on civil liberties and on the constitutional rights. And I believe the basic fundamental issue here and the question here is that if those in power openly and aggressively state that they do not accept what we know is the basic structure of the constitution, then we are in a very critical phase in the life of our country and the life of our society. And these are not secret discussions which happen behind closed doors. These are statements which are made by the top functionaries of the executive on the floor of the Parliament. When for example a senior minister who is leading the home ministry of this country makes a statement that secularism is a dirty word, a much abused word, then naturally citizens we are concerned. When chief ministers of the most popular state make a statement that our aim is to get the word secularism removed from the constitution, then we go back and look at those sane judges and are thankful for them who said that there are certain basic structures of the constitution including secularism which cannot be tempered with, but we have a situation as both the previous speakers have said that we have a situation where if parliament takes it on to itself because of a single majority or I mean I hope it never happens but a two-third majority to say that we change the constitution. So my point is this that when we discuss judicial accountability independence we look at it in a comprehensive way at the time in which this country is poised. And I say without any ambiguity whatsoever that we are poised on the brink of whether the constitution as we know it today survives and if the constitution as we know it today does not survive the question is can India survive? So if we look at it that way and the second point just very briefly that we are concerned about the judiciary because at the end of the day according to the constitution it is a watchdog which has to ensure constitutional rights are upheld. But at the same time the other pillars of the constitution what is happening to parliament today? Must I don't know whether this is an occasion where I am permitted but I must congratulate Justice Chandrachul for his most important observation which said in the discussion in the Adhaar judgment that you cannot have the Adhaar card treated as a money bill it is unconstitutional. And we congratulate him for it. But my dear friends as you know this is not a technical thing that this is a money bill or something else but if Raja Sabha is there then what difference does it make? It's not like that. It is because you don't believe in the parliamentary sanctity of the rights of parliament and therefore because you believe you do not have a majority in the upper house you just ignore the upper house and you transfer a blatantly political thing and you make it into a money bill. And not only that have you ever heard of electorally, electoral connected issues to be brought into the budget? I mean we have seen many finance ministers who write roughshod over people's rights are not going into that. But how does an electoral bond issue how does electoral donation issue which is part of electoral reform discussion how does it come into the budget? It comes into the budget because the government of the day believes that because the court is intervening as far as many cases under FCRA are concerned therefore change the FCRA act do it retrospectively so the illegal foreign donations you have got can be legalized and secondly stop transparent donations to political parties make it opaque make it non-transparent start electoral bonds which means you do not have to say who the donor is to your party any corporate can buy thousands of crores of electoral bonds and donate it to any party and that party is not duty bound by law to say who has given the money. So Raphael is nothing compared to what is to come in the future it is nothing to what because they made this into a budgetary provision why because it does not the budget does not have to be passed by the Rajasabha since it is a money. So the point I'm making is all institutions today are under attack including parliament. And coming to the judiciary we know both these aspects the aspects of accountability the aspects of independence they are today intrinsically linked because if you don't have accountability you don't have independence if you don't have independence you don't have accountability because the basic question is accountable to whom and independent of whom. Are you independent of the government? Yes you may be. Are you independent of corporates? You may not be. So independent from whom? And who are you going to be accountable for? That can only be answered by one word the constitution of India you are accountable to the constitution of India and your independence must be from all those from this point of view am I defending the constitutional provision or not? Now in that in parliament when this bill was first brought in 2010 we have taken a position that this is a very narrow concept of the judiciary because you are only looking at the issue of appointments which is linked to accountability and independence you are not looking at the other important aspect of corruption of wrongdoing at different levels of the judiciary and therefore if you look at that if a judge has committed a wrong what and how are you to deal with it? Today this long impeachment process we saw what happened after four senior judges of the Supreme Court made a public statement saying of talking of their sense of disquiet and dismay because of the management of the roster by the Chief Justice of India and we know the particular case of justice lawyer which was the background for that conference and if they took such a position after that it was decided by members of parliament that this is serious enough for an impeachment motion and therefore the impeachment motion to get signatures started that was aborted in between because some of those who signed changed their mind which is fine if that is what they want to do it is their conscience and their accountability to the people who elected them for them to say but the point here is in the last from 1950 till now there has only been one impeachment in by parliament so isn't the case that there were no other cases in these 70 years which deserved impeachment? I don't know that Justice Gauda can tell us and Raju Daman Chandra and Uday Singh Ji can also but the point is that the present processes of punishment or impeachment or accountability of those in the judicial system who have prima facie evidence against them it is ridiculous and therefore in parliament we had said the bill which is being brought has to be broadened the issue of impeachment also or punishment or investigation forget punishment even investigation today no single person in the judicial services can be even investigated by anybody unless you get the okay from the Chief Justice which never happens or very rarely happens so therefore combination of these is very very essential we know what is happening about appointments we don't agree with the present collegium system it is non-transferred, it is opaque it is dogged with all kinds of problems which already have been stated so I don't want to continue with that so what replaces collegium? now this memorandum of procedure which has been held up since 2014 till now in the memorandum of procedure the government wants to ensure it has the majority and the government wants to ensure it has the majority by keeping this issue of eminent persons who the government will appoint now we cannot accept that and therefore we disagree with what was earlier said when the NJAC bill was struck down by the Supreme Court that civil society is not developed enough in India I think that is an insult to our society civil society is not developed in India where civil society developed who is going to judge whether civil society is developed in India or not society itself will judge and therefore members of civil society eminent persons you give the definition of it undoubtedly must form part of the National Judicial Commission there have to be certain qualifications we know my dear friends as Dr Ambedkar has said you have a great constitution but if the men or women who implement it our little men and women the constitution becomes just that scrap of paper any institution you have we fought for the National Commission of Women today it's just become a cipher unfortunately for ruling party interests so any institution can be subverted we know that there's no guarantee but at the same time my friends it is essential to change the system and to change the system you have to prevent both executive dominance and collegium non transparency and that can only be done at least if you have some independent boy we may or may not agree with them but there have to be that system put into place which will not only take the responsibility of appointment of judges but also if there are any complaints about judges they should be given the authority to investigate into the matter if there is something found it can then be referred to by that but those two aspects of the judicial commission which we had supported in parliament I think is very very important and therefore the issue as Raju Ramachandran very correctly said is an issue today of defending our constitution and to do that we must change the system and to change the system you as members of the legal fraternity who are facing it directly I am sure that you will lead this movement in the way that we all expect you to and just to conclude just when I was coming I said to a friend of mine that I have to I am going there and I am going to speak basically extempo so the friend told me that okay but if you get stuck for words here is a joke you can say which is relevant so with your permission I'll just tell you the joke three inch so if you stop then you will grow up so he said before that he asked what is your last wish he said my last wish is I will take the best lager from some British pub and take the steak and the steak because they eat beef so he said beef and kidney so he ate all of them and when the guillotine came he stopped so he grew up so he started laughing the other one came he was from America and he asked what is your last wish he said I want a hot dog I want coke he made everything and gave it to him then the guillotine came he kept coming two inch before the neck then he stopped he also laughed and ran away then he came our Indian man so the Indian man he was standing there he said let me do it so he said no no what is your last wish he said I want tandoori chicken and naan so he asked he asked then he said fool you want tandoori chicken naan I said first fix the machine that the judicial machine that we call the judicial system we have to fix it first only then we can move forward thank you