Two important judgments

Supreme Court yesterday delivered two important judgments. In Union of India vs. Ramesh Ram, the Bench referred the matter to the Constitution Bench. In this case, the question was whether the candidates of the reserved category could opt to be selected under the general category on the basis of their merit, but also opt to be allotted a service under the reserved quota. In other words, whether the candidates belonging to these reserved categories, can have the cake and eat it too. There were certain questions to be considered whether such a course would affect the chances of general candidates not entitled to any reservation, and whether those selected under the reserved quota would lose the right to be considered for the services of their choice. The question whether the reservation benefit can be extended beyond 50 per cent ceiling also came to be considered. This case has earlier been discussed in these posts.

In the second judgment, the Supreme Court appears to have waited till the conclusion of elections in Punjab, lest its judgment used as a campaign issue. Former Chief Minister, Capt. Amarinder Singh has lost his plea that the corruption case against the Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal be tried outside the State. The Court has held that there is no reasonable apprehension that justice will not be done in this case in the State of Punjab.

Making Sure Prosecutors Act as a Check on Government

In this recent piece in the Indian Express I argue that India needs more strong and independent prosecutors to help address the continuing governance gap. I wrote the piece for a couple reasons. First, I feel that the government's prosecution apparatus is under-studied and theorized. Whether it's the CBI, the AGs office, or the state pollution control boards not enough is known about what drives prosecution decisions, nor is there sufficient public scrutiny in this regard. Second, prosecutors could act as an important check on government agencies, but all too often do not. This is a missed opportunity in the quest to make sure that law is properly implemented against citizens and the government.

One of the statistics that peaked my interest in this topic, but I did not have space to include in the article I came across when doing research on the state pollution control boards. If you do a Manupatra search you will get 12 cases in the Supreme Court in which a state pollution control board was a primary party. If you type in MC Mehta you get 119. Now this statistic may be misleading for a number of reasons - state pollution control boards were probably a secondary party in a number of other cases, many of the cases go through the appellate authority and so never enter the normal legal system, etc. Still, it brings home that these boards (like most prosecution agencies in India) aren't exactly pushing the law forward.