By reviving contempt case against Prashant Bhushan, Supreme Court resurrects larger controversies

A proceeding that is supposed to decide whether two tweets by lawyer Prashant Bhushan constitute contempt of the Supreme Court is turning into a serious legal quagmire for the apex court, partly because of its decision to revive an older case and partly because of aggressive legal moves by Bhushan’s advocates.

On Wednesday, August 5, senior lawyer Dushyant Dave, who was representing Bhushan in the contempt case, asked the court not to convict him, arguing his intention was the betterment of the justice delivery system.

While making these arguments, Dave raised a series of questions: Why are some judges not being allotted sensitive cases? How should one view the reinstatement of a woman Supreme Court employee who had accused former Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi of sexual harassment last April? She was reinstated even though her complaint was dismissed. What about the criticism that four sitting judges had mounted on the functioning of the court at a press conference in January 2018?

With this, criticism of the judiciary, which is mostly confined to critiques in the media, resounded in the Supreme Court itself.

In the past, judges have been able to avoid responding to criticism about their conduct by falling back on the argument that speaking...

Read more

from Scroll.in https://ift.tt/3gRvFjD
via IFTTT