Judiciary- The Supreme Court of India and its important Judgements

Judiciary is that pillar of a democratic country that is empowered to check the wrongs in the functioning of anything in the state. It safeguards the rights of an individual, group or institutions; acts as checks and balance of the democratic set up in the country, and is undeniably a prerequisite for democracy to exist in any place.

                In  India, there is a single and unified judicial system which performs its duty at three levels i.e. National level(Supreme Court), State level(High Courts) and district level(Subordinate courts).

                The Supreme Court, the highest and the final court of appeal in India, was established on 26^th Jan, 1950 with H.J. Kania as the first Chief Justice of India and 7 other judges, and had initially commenced its sitting within a part of the Parliament House itself. Later on in 1958, it was moved to the present day location i.e. Tilak Marg, New Delhi.

                Now, it has 31 judges (one Chief Justice and 30 other judges) since February 2009- before which it was 26 including the CJI.

                The SC was constituted based on Article 124 of the Indian Constitution; appointment of judges is based on Article 124(2); removal of judges on Article 124(4).

                It basically has five jurisdictions: 1) Original jurisdiction (Art. 131)

                                                                                2) Writ jurisdiction (Art. 32)

                                                                                3) Appellate jurisdiction

                                                                                4) Advisory jurisdiction (Art. 143)

                                                                                5) Revisory jurisdiction (Art. 137)

                For a person to be qualified for appointment in the SC, he/she has to meet two requirements: 1) must be a citizen of India

                             2) must have been a judge in a High Court or two or more courts in succession for at least 5 years; or has been an advocate of a High Court or two or more courts in succession for at least 10 years; or has to be a distinguished jurist in the opinion of the President (though this has never been done till date).

                A judge can be removed by the President after an address by each house of Parliament supported by a special majority, and only on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity.

               

                Some of the most important judgements by the apex court in the judicial history of the country have been filtered out and are listed below in a concise and in the simplest manner.

CHAMPAKAM DORAIRAJAN  Case, 1951: This landmark judgement of the Supreme Court(SC) led to the First Amendment of the Indian Constitution. It upheld the fundamental right to get admission into educational institutions maintained by the State. This is one of the judgements where SC declared that in case of conflict, Fundamental Rights(FRs) will prevail over Directive Principles of State Policy(DPSPs).

I.C. GOLAKH NATH Case, 1967: This judgement left Parliament with no power to curtail FRs. In other words, Parliament will have no authority to amend FRs.

MADHAVRAO SCINDIA Case, 1970: It abolished titles, privileges and remuneration (privy purses) of India’s erstwhile princely rulers.

KESAVANANDA BHARTI Case, 1973: This is one of, if not, the most important judgements, and is a watershed in the history of Indian Constitutionalism. It involved constitution of a 13 judge bench(highest till now) in order to give a final conclusion on the Golakhnath Case,1967. The bench decided by a thin majority of 7:6 in favour of the petitioners, thus establishing the Doctrine of Basic Structure, values most of which are enshrined in the Preamble of the Indian Constitution. The SC established that the Parliament does have the authority to amend the Constitution through the Article 368, but the ‘basic structure’ should not be altered. Here on, many other cases deal with specific basic structure values.

MANIKA GANDHI Case, 1978: The ruling on this case maintained that the procedure of freedom of speech must be fair and the law must not violate other FRs (U/A 14, 19 and 21).

MIVERVA MILLS Case, 1980: This judgement reiterated and further strengthened the ‘basic structure’ doctrine. It dealt with the amending powers of the Parliament, judicial review and balance between FRs and DPSPs.

SHAH BANO Case, 1985: The judgement on this case paved way for the Muslim women in India to enjoy equal rights after marriage and divorce as against the rigid and discriminative Muslim Personal Laws. The court upheld the right to alimony to the Muslim women, even after the iddat period is over (iddat period is that period a women has to wait after the death of her husband or divorce, before she is married to another man- it is usually only 3 months, unless under special circumstance, eg. Pregnancy).

INDIRA SWAHNEY Case, 1992: The court upheld some of the recommendations made by the Mandal Commission(constituted in 1979 under B.P Mandal) related to reservation system in the country. The 6:3 majority of the 9 judge bench defined the ‘creamy layer’ criteria and declared that it should be excluded from the backward classes- Article 16(4) permits the classification of backward classes into backward and more backward classes. It also upheld that the reservation should not go beyond 50%, and promotion not to be based on reservation.

S.R. BOMMAI Case, 1994: This is a landmark judgement that redefined the powers of the centre with regard to Art.356 of the Indian Constitution that deals with President’s rule/state emergency. It gave the state governments enough chance to prove its majority in the house by a ‘floor test’ and not take it outside the assembly.

VISHAKA Case, 1997: This is one of the most important judgements for the working women as it elevated the condition and environment of their work places in the country. The immediate cause of this case was an incident of brutal gang rape of a social worker named Bhanwari Devi in a village of Rajasthan, which in turn revealed the cruel violation of FRs in articles 14, 19 and 21, along with gender discrimination. The apex court then defined sexual harassment and set various guidelines for employers and their work places.

SAMATHA Case, 1997: The verdict on this case declared that government lands, tribal lands, or forest land cannot be leased to non-tribals or private companies for mining or industrial purposes.

T.M.A. PAI Case, 2002: An 11 judge bench was set up in order to interpret on an issue related to the right of minority community to set up educational institutions as given in Art.30 of the Constitution. The judgement talked about deregulation or decontrolling of such educational institutions by the State. However, some parts of the judgement (particularly para no.68) talked about the State and its control over such institutions. This lead to a sustained confusion, which didn’t end even after a 5 judge bench was constituted in 2003(Islamic Academy of Education vs. State of Karnataka). Finally a seven judge bench was constituted in 2005,popularly known as the Inamdar case, in order to look into the 2002 judgement. And the controversial paras were eventually removed.

UMA DEVI Case, 2006: This case deals with illegal appointments into government services and regularisation of ad hoc employees- without ensuring a proper appointment procedure through the Public Service Commission or the like, and generally, the issues that violate the right to equality of opportunity bestowed upon the citizens U/A 16 of the Indian Constitution. This case is especially important for the Nagas lately, as it has not been long that we saw ACUAT  and PSAN protest against the backdoor appointments made by the Government of Nagaland- who also referred to the verdict of the Supreme Court on this case to validate their stance.

OM PRAKASH Case, 2006: The ruling on this case ordered that a rape accused would be convicted solely on the account of the victim, even if medical evidence prove contrary to it.

NIRBHAYA Case, 2012: This case inevitably came up after the horrific incident of a young woman who was gang-raped and brutally tortured by sex men in a moving bus in the National Capital Territory, and eventually succumbed to her injuries. The ruling on this case led to the creation of six fast track courts exclusively for hearing rape cases. Many new laws were created and even the existing laws were amended in order to award harsher punishments to rapists. The definition of rape was also widened by the court in order to include all sorts of violations and not just penile-vaginal intercourse.

SECTION 377 Case, 2013: Section 377 of the Indian Penal Court criminalises sexual activities “against the order of nature”, which means homosexual activities are an offence, and this was a law since 1861. However, in 2009 the Delhi High Court struck down the provisions of this section and declared it as unconstitutional. But this verdict of the Delhi HC was overturned by SC in 11 Dec 2013, which chose to retain the earlier provision of section 377 and make gay sex or the like to remain as a crime. However, the Right to Privacy that was declared as a fundamental right on August 2017, contradicts this judgement as it paved way for Lesbian Gay Bisexual Transsexual rights to be recognised as a fundamental right.

NOTA, 2013: It deals with providing the voters of the country with ‘None of The Above’ option if they feel like none of the candidates in question deserve the vote. It made the Right to Negative Vote as a fundamental right of speech and expression under the Constitution.

THE RIGHT TO PRIVACY JUDGEMENT, 2017: On Aug 11, 2015 a constitutional battle broke out when the Attorney General of India declared the Constitution does not provide any fundamental right to privacy to the citizens, as he spoke with regard to the mandatory implementation of the Aadhar scheme by the government. This confusion and battle ended only on 24 Aug 2017 when a 9 judge bench of the SC unanimously declared that Right to Privacy is a fundamental right under Article 21 of the Indian Constitution. It is also in compliance with Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which provides protection against “arbitrary interference” with one’s privacy. With this judgement, many other issues will be affected, and many laws and previous judgements would have to be amended and revised- including data collection, state surveillance, LGBT rights, etc.

                With this we have successfully concluded a knowledge pack journey that started from the time the Supreme Court was established till the year we are living in today. These are some of the most important judgements in the history of Supreme Court rulings- which are important for anyone who wants to follow closely the present political affairs (though there are many other important judgement that haven’t been included here). These judgements still play vital roles in shaping even the present political or social policies and practices, and thus needless to say, more important for researchers, students and civil service aspirants alike.

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