Prashant Bhushan Exceeds His Brief

PIL seeks quashing of Andhra Pradesh high court judge’s appointment

Prashant Bhushan and Ram Jethmalani, two of India's most high profile lawyers are supporting a Public Interest Litigation by an advocate Manohar Reddy, seeking to quash the appointment of a Justice N V Ramana of the Andhra Pradesh High Court. The details of the allegation are in the news report.  

The allegation does not relate to any personal or professional misconduct of the judge while in office. 

However it does allege that the judge may have suppressed a material and mandated fact, that may have disqualified him to pursue a career in the judiciary. 

The report also makes it clear that while the judge may have suppressed the fact of having a minor criminal record in his application, the matter has been a subject of public negotiations for some time.

If true,  these allegations are serious. The independence of all our constitutional institutions are their life's breath and heart's blood. Our constitution comes alive in the aloof manner in which they examine, interrogate and abrade each other.

In order that they maintain their abrasive quality, they cannot hold any uncomfortable secrets. They cannot be potential targets for blackmail or seduction. They have to stay well inflated with their abrasive purpose throughout their service life.

So if Justice Ramana did withhold a 'dirty secret' and had become transparently beholden to the government to favour him with some rare kindness, I at least, will have no doubts that he has forfeited his place among his awesome, black robed brethren.

He is the proverbial rotten apple that must be quickly discarded, before he infects the rest of the basket with his disease.

And Shri Bhushan and his well funded NGO deserves the warm gratitude of all reasonable persons in society for having taken the time off from his no doubt grueling schedule of personal and private interests - does he have any ? to undertake the onerous task of ejecting a serving Indian judge from his high office.

But truth does not yield itself so easily.

If the truth was what a mystic messiah or a cabal of  high priests declared, then we would have no need for constitutions and laws, procedures and protocols, evidence and witnesses, black robes and sober miens, lawyers and litigants. 


We can dispense with books and libraries, teachers and schools, science and ethics and all the laboriously constructed appurtenances of the idea of humanity's evolution and difference and submit like our simian cousins to a place in the tribe. 



I have had a brush with Shri Prashanth Bhushan - an encounter which left me wondering whether this firebrand's legendary talent for sniffing out the public interest does not sometimes desert him.