AA Edit | Great Challenges Loom For Surya Kant As CJI

The Indian republic has lived for 75 years under the guidance and protection of the Constitution, which is facing challenges that are unprecedented in its history. The Constitution is a document conceived and designed to institute a system in which the state is run in such a way that it works for the betterment of the citizens, upholding the principles of justice, liberty, equality and fraternity. Efforts have been made several times to undermine its importance and pre-eminence but the vigilance of the people and the watchful eyes of the constitutional institutions have frustrated them all. The Supreme Court of India has played a key role in those efforts.

Justice Surya Kant becomes the Chief Justice of India at a time when the edifices of the Constitution are increasingly under attack and the apex court has fought shy of defending them with all the powers at its command. Every single idea that was seen foundational in the Constitution is questioned in different ways these days. Those who have not yet been able to stomach the idea of an India that accepts and appreciates diversity are launching one attack after the other on the federal structure of the Constitution, which finds expression in its very first Article.

The Constitution proclaims that India is a union of states, and that the states will have democratically elected legislatures with the power to make laws. However, this power is being usurped by the unelected governors who have no right to sit in judgment over the wisdom of the legislatures. There are governors who pronounce a black warrant on the Bills they dislike by sitting on them. The states are fighting a battle against this crass undermining of the legislative powers, in fact of the very idea of democratic governance, but are unfortunately losing it. The apex court which had defined federalism as a basic character of the Constitution had a duty to defend it but it has chosen not to do so. Even a feeble attempt to restore the primacy of the state legislatures appears destined to fail as the Constitution bench, in its reply to the Presidential reference, voted against it.

Universal adult franchise is an undisputable character of a functional democracy but the latest attempts by the Election Commission to force a special intensive revision of the voters’ list with an unholy haste appears to be counter-productive. It was the Commission’s job to ensure that all and only bona fide voters are there on the list but it went ahead with an exclusionary process. But for a forceful intervention of a bench headed by Justice Surya Kant, the EC would have gone ahead with it disenfranchising voters for no fault of theirs. A similar intervention will be needed when the EC rolls out the very same programme across the country.

The power of the judiciary lies not in the number of people under its command but in its ability to ensure that its writs based on the Constitution and the law are run in the country, and the violators, however powerful they are, are brought to book while the lone man on the street, the founder of this nation, is protected against the machinations of the mighty state. It is high time the Constitution found a more vigilant protector in the Supreme Court of India.