 Hello and welcome to Communism Combat and News Clip. Today we are going to talk about the crisis our judiciary is facing after the yesterday's press conference by four senior most judges of Supreme Court. And to discuss the matter with us, we have Supreme Court Advocate Kamini Jaiswal. Welcome to our show, ma'am. Yesterday it was the first time when four most senior judges of the Supreme Court held a press conference and they alleged a lot of irregularities about the Supreme Court, how it functions and everything. So what is your take on? I'm sorry, I don't think I call it an allegation because what they did was only bring out in the forefront the agony that they have been facing in the last few months on certain things which should never have happened. It's a very unfortunate day in the history of the judicial system and I hope it never does happen again. But they only placed before the people as to what exactly is happening and what is happening within the Supreme Court and how the all is not well within the system. One of the major problem that they talked about was how the CGI's role in the Master of Loster were there. No, no, what they talked about is, I mean, nobody is denying the fact that the Chief Justice of India has always been, this is not the first time that we have a Chief Justice of India, okay? We've always had one. And Chief Justice of India is one amongst equals. However, in certain administrative matters, he has the power to pass orders and also that he is, as per the law, the master of the roster. So the master of the roster or the master means that he will, he has the power to constitute the benches and allocate matters roster-wise. Now roster-wise is there has to be every power that is given to anybody accompanies some duty. Now the duty has to be to the use of that power in a judicious manner and not in a high-handed and arbitrary manner as is being done now. The judicious manner means there must be some guidelines. It has always been there. There is matters are always categorized and they are distributed category-wise. When you're filing a matter in the Supreme Court, you are obliged to fill in the category to which this matter belongs. And as per that categorization, the matters are allocated to the different benches that have been constituted and who are dealing with these matters. Subject-wise is the category. So now what one has seen of late is, you know, and I know all the judges are equal, but still there is something called seniority. You have a judge number, one a court number, one a court number, two a court number, three and there onwards court number, 13. The whole thing is that all these judges have reached whichever court they have as a matter of their experience in the Supreme Court. So the seniority is only way their experience in the Supreme Court. So therefore, when there are very sensitive matters or matters which have very wide ramifications, the past practice has been that these matters are normally allocated to the senior most judges, which means either court number 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 or whatever it is as it goes down. It is not as if that the Chief Justice can just pick up matters and put them before X bench to, you know, get a particular result. Now that is unfortunate because what happens there is that the cardinal principle is that justice must not only be done, but it must be seen to be done. So if you are allocating matters subject-wise or now we have depending so much on the computer. So you feed it in the computer that this subject goes to this court, this subject. So ultimately, so nobody can ever raise any kind of a doubt grievance or apprehension that this matter has been listed in so and so court arbitrarily. So you know that is how the whole thing has been going on. Nobody has ever questioned the, you know, the power of the Chief Justice to allocate matters or to constitute benches. But only now what is happening matters are being picked up and depending on how serious they are and what ramifications they have for the people in power, they are being allocated to, you know, courts which are much lower in the, you know, serial number or whatever you call them. I would say that judges with lesser experience than those who are there in the higher court. So that created a lot of and then also matters once they are listed in a particular court they should, they cannot be lifted up from that court and then, you know, just because you are uncomfortable that the matter is going on there, listed in other court. All these kind of things, you know, this arbitrarily pushing matters from one bench to the other or allocating a particular kind of matters to one particular bench only was creating a lot of, you know, apprehensions in the mind of the people and the people concerned. So therefore, I think, you know, and these matters and these senior most judges also owe some duty to the, you know, litigating public and to the people at large. They also are answerable and accountable to that extent that what is going on in the court, they can be silent spectators, you know, we don't have an ostrich kind of an existence, let things happen and put it under the carpet. So I think, you know, it is important and though it is very unfortunate, I think it is good that this has come out and people are now aware what is happening. Are there any other steps that need to be taken to make the judiciary in whole, to make it more transparent, more pro-people? Yes, more pro-people, I agree, you know, judiciary most, they have to only judges have to be sensitive to the problems, you know. The Supreme Court is meant for the rich and the poor alike. But we have from so many years been saying, it seems that the rich people get more hearing in the Supreme Court than a poor matter because he doesn't have the, you know, money power to engage the senior most lawyers and pay the lax and lax that is required. The poor fellow will, you know, barely get a hearing. So therefore, and also the sum, what is it happening is that these kind of matters where according to what happens, there are lot of people languishing in jail, but the criminal appeals are not being heard because these are poor people, nobody is bothered, they don't have senior lawyers who are able to do anything for them. Matters where large amount of finance is involved are getting priority being heard. So obviously, large finance being involved means so therefore, you know, lot needs to be done. In fact, there needs to be lot of transparency in the Supreme Court, in the functioning of the Supreme Court so that nobody can, a lot of smoke is there, but I always believe that there can be no smoke without any fire, but sometimes it can be much more smoke than the fire actually. So a lot of, you know, a lot of rumors going around, lot of things happening which you can never know, you can never check the veracity of that. So therefore, I think there has to be a lot more transparency in the functioning of the Supreme Court. How has the professional lawyer's body responded to this current crisis? I know there are particular class of people who would be very happy, they are the Japanese who only worship the rising sun. So the lot of people would only be worshiping the rising sun and the others feel anyway, these people have, the other judges have nothing to say. So the professional body is definitely divided, it is totally divided, but I can tell you that a lot of these allegations that go around would never have been, if the lawyer's body had been united and had been strong and had been functioning in the right direction because there can be, we hear a lot of financial irregularities. Now unless the lawyers are, conduits or lawyers are part of it, it can never be. So therefore, you know, professional bodies, we all know professional bodies are supposed to be for the welfare of the legal profession and the lawyers, but they seem to be doing anything but working towards the welfare of the lawyers. This morning, the Principal Secretary to the PM called upon the CGI, how do you see this? How do you see this? I find it very contradictory in terms because the government has gone on record saying, this is an internal matter and we should not, we don't need to interfere, we have nothing to say, they are saying nothing about it. What is the Principal Secretary doing meeting the CGI? Let's take the discussion to a larger, a broader space. Do you think there is an undeclared emergency in the country today and how is it operating? Listen, that undeclared emergency has been going on for some time. It has nothing to do with the press conference that happened yesterday. A lot of people have been talking that you know, what you wear, what you do, who you talk to, what you do, everything is going to be dictated by the government in power. So, if that is not emergency, what is? What you eat, you know, people are living under, constantly living under fear. People are not moving around, you know, there are particular class of people who are so scared that people are not ready to, people cannot talk. They are fearful about talking. I had been to Gujarat, people were fearful of saying that they would not vote for the present government. We will not vote for the government, but we will not say it. So, if that is not a, you can't express if your freedom of expression is curtailed, what more, what else do you want? I mean, after all, they can't stop our breathing the air that is there. But definitely, if they stop our fundamental right of freedom of expression and movement is curtailed, it is a kind of an undeclared emergency. So, last question ma'am, after the dramatic event of yesterday's press conference, how do you, what is the way forward? How do you see this resolving? Will there be a positive resolution to this? I do hope, you know, when things go very low, there is always, there has to be something, when it comes back, it has to bounce back. So, you know, now that we have gone, it has fallen so low, the whole thing, I am sure we will bounce back. Thank you so much for talking to us. This is all the time we have for today. Thank you and keep watching Newsclick and Subram.