Legally Speaking: TV Anchor and activist lawyer avail same relief, yet latter slams SC

Dhananjay Mahapatra | TNN | May 4, 2020, 09:20 IST

NEW DELHI: More than three decades back, the Supreme Court formulated public interest litigation, on the lines of a representative class action suit, for remedying violations of fundamental rights of poor, destitute and voiceless. It yielded good results for downtrodden, deprived and exploited.
Over the years, it incubated a cult of social activists and activist lawyers specialising in exploring and then exploiting this magic instrument. Through PILs in HCs and SC, they helped poor, hunted corrupt and harangued about their ability to get quick-fixes. It became popular given the snail-pace of policy implementation by governments.
Success of delivering quick-fixes was heady. The hedonic feeling of getting beamed to households with caustic bytes on TV channels turned intoxicating. Courts became a platform. Social activists and activist lawyers achieved stardom. Stars could no longer take ‘no’ as an answer from courts to their PILs. Stakes were high. It turned personal and ugly.
A Judge, who rejected their PILs, became newest targets. Doubts were expressed about their ability and integrity. A well-oiled free speech network carried it far and wide. Diatribes often work like fire on tinder minds of masses. Unsurprisingly, many Judges, who had rightly or wrongly entertained their PILs, wisely opted to swell activists’ ranks after retirement.
Lockdown caused recession in PIL business was frustrating for this cult. They wanted to wax their messiah image during this difficult time by attempting to manage Covid-19 caused situations. They pushed SC to step into supply of medical equipments, charter planes to bring back people stuck abroad, arrange buses to reach migrant workers their homes and pay six crore of them minimum wages.
SC expressed inability to get into nitty-gritty of managing lockdown isues. But, it directed the governments to ensure food, shelter and basic needs of migrant workers. This got the goat of activists who had own idea about priorities for political executives and courts. Frustrated, they targeted both the courts and governments.
Passing away of accomplished and acclaimed actor Irrfan Khan spurred a renowned activist lawyer to tweet a dialogue from ‘Pan Singh Tomar’ film - “Behad mein baghi hote hain, dakait milte hain Parliament men” (Ravines shelter outlaws but dacoits roam Parliament).
Wish he had read Pan Singh Tomar’s family feud fuelled real life story that turned a soldier-athlete into an outlaw and not taken refuge in the racy dialogue to vent his frustration. Eager to score a point, he forgot that his father as the country’s law minister from1977-79, roamed Parliament after people punished Indira Gandhi’s Congress in polls for excesses during Emergency.
SC is a melting pot of varied litigation attracting litigants and advocates from length and breadth of the country and hence, a potential hotspot for Covid-19 spread. Lockdown forced it to curtail its business of hearing nearly 800 cases daily to a bare minimum extremely urgent matters through video conferencing.
Social activists, represented by the activist lawyer, filed a flurry of PILs. But, success was limited. It angered him. He took to twitter to berate the judges and the courts, ironically the platform for his stardom. He said, “I have watched the Supreme Court since the Emergency. The kind of abject surrender to the government that we are seeing today was not seen even during the Emergency. Most Judges have totally forgotten their oath to protect the Constitution and fundamental rights of the people.”
He criticised SC for fast-tracking hearing of a TV anchor’s petition seeking quashing of FIRs lodged against him for alleged innuendos hurled at a top Congress leader during a telecast after giving out her full name. The activist lawyer warned that out of turn listing of TV anchor’s petition, ignoring PILs for migrant workers, waned public faith in SC.
Within days, he benefitted from the sin as his petition challenging an FIR lodged against him in Gujarat for allegedly hurting religious sentiments was fast tracked. His alleged offending tweet had compared re-telecast of Ramayana and Mahabharata serials during lockdown to offering opium to stupefy people to migrant workers’ woes.
In SC, he justified his tweet by quoting Karl Marx’s obscure 1843 comment in a radical journal - ‘religion is the opium of people’, which gained currency in public lexicon only in 1930s. SC gave him a better protection than the TV anchor. He must have felt good with the SC’s endorsement that his free speech is more precious!
It would not have happened during Emergency, when Indira Gandhi’s hunger for power led the Congress regime to suspend all rights with contempt towards people, rule of law and courts. In contrast, all right are intact during Covid-19 caused emergency.
To control the pandemic, World has adopted social distancing and lockdown necessitating restriction on free movement. We had waited for conclusion of Kargil war to ask the SC to examine alleged scam in purchase of coffins. Let us wait for war against Corona to get over. We will have ample time to reflect and analyse faults of government and the SC.