The judiaciary of late, has become an active orchestrator in government's desicions on public affairs. From critisizing the government to issuing diktats to forming investigative teams, they seem to be doing it all.
Here, i'd like to mention the Supreme Court case of 1975, numbered 2299, Indira Gandhi vs Raj Narain, where the role of judiciary in a democracy and the nature of its power was discussed. The 5 judge bench, (A Ray, H Khanna, K Mathew, M Beg and Y Chandrachud) pronounced that the judiciary involvement must rightly end with deciding whether the legislature has acted within its constitutional authority or not and that questions of policy, its merits and demerits, should never be gone into. Obviously, it has been more than adequately stricter than that.
The Supreme Court had last year, issued a diktat to the government, ordering them to distribute all the surplus food grain, free of cost to the poor, so as to avoid millions of tonnes of foodgrains from rotting lying out in the open at the FCI godowns across the country.
Close to 18.2 million tonnes of foodgrains had been rotting at the FCI godowns, of which the government had only acknowledged rotting of 11,700 tonnes, despite an FCI report that talked about 59,000 tonnes of grains rotting in Punjab alone. The Agricultural Minister, Mr. Sharad Pawar, replied by saying that it wasn't possible for the government to distribute the grains free of cost. The Prime Minister had then jumped into the discussion and had adviced the Supreme Court not to interfere with the affairs of the government. This however, didnot deter the Supreme Court to up its ante on taking the the govt. head on.
In an effort to compeletely snub govenrment's ostentatious investigative team on black money,the Supreme Court on 5 July 2011 appointed their own SIT (Special Investigation Team), a committee of two of its retired judges to follow the trail of black money stashed in foreign banks. In addition to this, the Supreme Court had also questioned the government's opprobrious act, at the Ramlila Maidan in the national capital, against the untennable group of protege of Baba Ramdev.
Supreme Court, as it stands today, seems wide awake and profoundly pragmatic in its concerns over public affairs, but times are bound to change and its over interference in goverment affairs can lead to a desecration of the whole process of democracy.
Here, i'd like to mention the Supreme Court case of 1975, numbered 2299, Indira Gandhi vs Raj Narain, where the role of judiciary in a democracy and the nature of its power was discussed. The 5 judge bench, (A Ray, H Khanna, K Mathew, M Beg and Y Chandrachud) pronounced that the judiciary involvement must rightly end with deciding whether the legislature has acted within its constitutional authority or not and that questions of policy, its merits and demerits, should never be gone into. Obviously, it has been more than adequately stricter than that.
The Supreme Court had last year, issued a diktat to the government, ordering them to distribute all the surplus food grain, free of cost to the poor, so as to avoid millions of tonnes of foodgrains from rotting lying out in the open at the FCI godowns across the country.
Close to 18.2 million tonnes of foodgrains had been rotting at the FCI godowns, of which the government had only acknowledged rotting of 11,700 tonnes, despite an FCI report that talked about 59,000 tonnes of grains rotting in Punjab alone. The Agricultural Minister, Mr. Sharad Pawar, replied by saying that it wasn't possible for the government to distribute the grains free of cost. The Prime Minister had then jumped into the discussion and had adviced the Supreme Court not to interfere with the affairs of the government. This however, didnot deter the Supreme Court to up its ante on taking the the govt. head on.
In an effort to compeletely snub govenrment's ostentatious investigative team on black money,the Supreme Court on 5 July 2011 appointed their own SIT (Special Investigation Team), a committee of two of its retired judges to follow the trail of black money stashed in foreign banks. In addition to this, the Supreme Court had also questioned the government's opprobrious act, at the Ramlila Maidan in the national capital, against the untennable group of protege of Baba Ramdev.
Supreme Court, as it stands today, seems wide awake and profoundly pragmatic in its concerns over public affairs, but times are bound to change and its over interference in goverment affairs can lead to a desecration of the whole process of democracy.
