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Litigation Lounge

TAKING A STAND ON SITTING DOWN

SayakDasguptaA few years ago, I had read an article about the peculiar social and cultural differences between Japan and the west. It was written by an American man who had married a Japanese woman and settled down in Tokyo. He wrote of an incident when his parents-in-law had come to eat dinner. As they entered, the writer, as a matter of habit, proceeded to help his mother-in-law take her coat off and put it on the coat rack. He then realised that his father-in-law had not taken too kindly to that rather innocent act. The writer’s wife told him later that while taking your guest’s coat was a gesture of polite hospitality in the west, in Japan it was an act of deep intimacy – one only husbands can do for their wives. When it comes to love, the Japanese are culturally not as flamboyant, effusive and demonstrative as the Americans or Europeans (the Japanese millennial might be more westernised, but this seemingly still holds true for most of Japan). They don’t hug and kiss each other all the time. They don’t say “I love you” at the end of every conversation. Instead, the Japanese show their affection for their spouses and even their children through a hundred small acts that demonstrate caring and intimacy. This restrained, understated form of love might seem strange and even silly to westerners, but that doesn’t make it any less valid. In fact, it has its own charm and beauty.

This is also true of Indians. I am sure only a minority of the Indian readers of this blog will have actually heard their parents or grandparents openly profess their love for each other. And your mother or father might not actually say the words, but they show you they love you in other ways (making your favourite food, feeding you before they eat, giving you extra portions), and perhaps you do the same. Now, imagine if some people found this unspoken love ridiculous and made it a rule that every morning before you take a bath you must step outside your house and shout “I love my mother/father/spouse” loudly, for everyone to hear. Isn’t that strangely intrusive and oddly obtrusive at the same time? What does bathing have to do with loving your family? Why do you have to demonstrate to everyone regularly that you love your mother? Do you really need to remind yourself that you love your father? Will this make you love them more?

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Shyam Narayan Chouksey (Image from Facebook)

The Supreme Court’s interim order pursuant to the writ petition filed by Shyam Narayan Chouksey seems to suggest that your love for your country should be demonstrated openly and publicly every time you go to a theatre to watch Shah Rukh Khan romance an actress in the Swiss Alps or Salman Khan single-handedly beat up the entire Indian mafia. Many people have asked a very pertinent question: why movie theatres? On the face of it, playing the national anthem before a film might seem like quite an arbitrary way to instil patriotism in people. It’s like making people sing ‘Vande Mataram’ every time they open a book. But film as a medium is optimal for eliciting an affective reaction. When people go to watch a film, you have a large group of people in a single enclosed space completely focused on whatever is happening on the screen. It is the perfect setting to make you feel whatever the person in control wants you to feel. As author China Mieville has said, “You know how easy it is to emotionally manipulate you. Hollywood is a factory to manipulate you. That is what it does. That is what it is for. Emotion is very easy to manipulate. You’re in a darkened room, there are loud noises, there’s light shining in the darkness. It is an overwhelming experience in certain ways. I think quite a lot of the time when people say ‘I liked it’, what they mean is something along the lines of ‘I was temporarily stupefied by noises and lights for which my limbic system has no adaptive evolutionary mechanisms to respond with.’” The movie theatre’s unique ability to sweep you off your feet is why it has historically been the preferred venue for propaganda. Of course, it was in a movie theatre where this all began.

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The disputed scene from Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham (Image from YouTube)

In 2001, Shyam Narayan Chouksey was in Jyoti Talkies, a movie theatre in Bhopal, watching Karan Johar’s Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham. In one scene clearly designed to pull at the heartstrings of the patriotic NRI, an Indian-origin child born in the UK surprises his parents by singing the Indian national anthem at an event in his preppy private school. Mr. Chouksey immediately stood up for the anthem, but was inconsolably dismayed to see that everyone else hadn’t done the same. In fact, some even booed at him (probably because he was blocking the screen). He was also angered by the movie’s treatment of the national anthem. He filed a writ at the Madhya Pradesh High Court and it went to a double bench. Coincidentally, one of the judges was Dipak Misra J, the same judge who delivered the interim order on November 30, 2016. The 2003 judgment delivered by Misra J is quite a read, with several paragraphs dedicated to flowery, grandiose, baroque (to the point of incoherence) praise of the national anthem. “The national anthem is pivotal and centripodal to the basic conception of sovereignty and integrity of India,” it declares. “It is the marrow of nationalism, hypostasis of patriotism, nucleus of national heritage, substratum of culture and epitome of national honour.” Denouncing the scene in the film in which a young boy falters while singing the national anthem, Misra J writes: “They have not kept in mind ‘vox populi, vox dei’. The producer and the director have allowed the National Anthem of Bharat, the alpha and omega of the country to the backseat. On a first flush it may look like a magnum opus of patriotism but on a deeper probe and greater scrutiny it is a simulacrum having the semblance but sans real substance. There cannot be like Caesar’s thrasonical brags of ‘veni, vidi, vici.’ The boy cannot be allowed to make his innocence a parents rodomontrade, at the cost of national honour. In our view it is contrary to national ethos and an anathema to the sanguinity of the national feeling. It is an exposition of ad libitum.” The High Court’s decision was to ban Kabhi Khushi Kabhi Gham until the scene in question was deleted.

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Justice O. Chinnappa Reddy who delivered the Bijoe Emmanuel judgment (Image from supremecourtofindia.nic.in)

The judgment referred extensively to the landmark case of Bijoe Emmanuel & Ors. vs. State of Kerala & Ors. AIR 1987 SC 748. On July 8, 1985, the Emmanuel siblings – 15-year-old Bijoe, 13-year-old Binu and 10-year-old Bindu – were attending school when the headmistress announced that the national anthem would be sung in the classroom. The siblings stood up but did not sing, as they were Jehovah’s Witnesses, a specific Christian sect that prohibits its followers from singing in praise of anything or anyone apart from their god. Their father, V.J. Emmanuel asked for a special concession for his children on religious grounds and the headmistress and senior teachers agreed. However, word reached a member of the legislative assembly who raised the matter in the house and soon a senior school inspector ordered the headmistress to expel the children. Mr. Emmanuel filed a writ petition in the Kerala High Court, but when the decision went against him, he appealed to the Supreme Court. The Supreme Court upheld the students’ right not to sing the national anthem, stating that their fundamental rights under Articles 19(1)(a) and 25(1) had been infringed. In its 2003 judgment, the Madhya Pradesh High Court seems to have relied specifically on the following paragraph from the Bijoe Emmanuel judgment: “We may at once say that there is no provisions of law which obliges anyone to sing the National Anthem nor do we think that it is disrespectful to the National Anthem if a person who stands up respectfully when the National Anthem is sung does not join the singing. It is true Art. 51-A(a) of the Constitution enjoins a duty on every citizen of India ‘to abide by the Constitution and respect its ideals and institutions, the National Flag and the National Anthem.’ Proper respect is shown to the National Anthem by standing up when the National Anthem is sung. It will not be right to say that disrespect is shown by not joining in the singing.”

Misra J seems to have relied on a literal reading of this paragraph when he, in the interim order dated November 30, 2016, made it compulsory for all moviegoers to stand up when the national anthem plays in a movie theatre. He writes in the order, “Be it stated, a time has come, the citizens of the country must realise that they live in a nation and are duty bound to show respect to National Anthem which is the symbol of the Constitutional Patriotism and inherent national quality. It does not allow any different notion or the perception of individual rights, that have individually thought of have no space. [sic] The idea is constitutionally impermissible.” And showing respect means standing because that has been mentioned in the Bijoe Emmanuel judgment. One wonders, if there had been no Bijoe Emmanuel judgment, would the order have made it compulsory for people to sing it as well? Just like there is no provision of law that obliges anyone to sing the national anthem, there is also no provision that obliges anyone to stand for the national anthem. The Prevention of Insults to National Honour Act, 1971, a tiny act with just four sections, states in Section 3: “Whoever intentionally prevents the singing of the Indian National Anthem or causes disturbances to any assembly engaged in such singing shall be punished with imprisonment for a term, which may extend to three years, or with fine, or with both.” Would sitting quietly during the singing of the national anthem constitute prevention of singing the national anthem?

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Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Earlier this year, American football player Colin Kaepernick caused a huge controversy in the US when he sat or kneeled during the American national anthem in a series of matches to protest the killing of several black US citizens by the police. Was he being unpatriotic? Many of his fellow athletes didn’t think so and joined him. When asked about it in an interview, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said, “I think it’s really dumb of them. Would I arrest them for doing it? No. I think it’s dumb and disrespectful. I would have the same answer if you asked me about flag-burning. I think it’s a terrible thing to do. But I wouldn’t lock a person up for doing it. I would point out how ridiculous it seems to me to do such an act. It’s dangerous to arrest people for conduct that doesn’t jeopardise the health or well-being of other people. It is a symbol they are engaged in.” This is the point. Forcing people to demonstrate faux patriotism under the threat of arrest is dangerously close to totalitarianism. Playing the national anthem in movie theatres serves no reasonable purpose and has, in fact, been the cause for violence in the recent past, including the case of Salil Chaturvedi, who was assaulted in a movie theatre in Goa for not standing up for the national anthem. Why did he not stand up? He is a paraplegic. In the 90s, he had represented India in two wheelchair tennis tournaments. “Irrespective of my contribution to the country, I still need to prove my patriotism,” he said. People have varied relationships with their nation and have varied ways of expressing them. Forcing everyone to conform to one arbitrary way of engaging with their country will not make them more patriotic. As Justice Chinnappa Reddy said at the very end of the Bijoe Emmanuel judgment, underlining, in my opinion, the true spirit of the decision: “our tradition teaches tolerance; our philosophy preaches tolerance; our constitution practices tolerance; let us not dilute it.”

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Rabindranath Tagore

One last thing. The author of our national anthem, Rabindranath Tagore, was often very vocally critical of the very concept of a “Nation”. In 1916, he visited Japan and was alarmed by what was being done in the name of nationalism there. I started this piece with Japan and it seems natural that I should end with Tagore’s observations about it: “I have seen in Japan the voluntary submission of the whole people to the trimming of their minds and clipping of their freedom by their government, which through various educational agencies regulates their thoughts, manufactures their feelings, becomes suspiciously watchful when they show signs of inclining toward the spiritual, leading them through a narrow path not toward what is true but what is necessary for the complete welding of them into one uniform mass according to its own recipe. The people accept this all-pervading mental slavery with cheerfulness and pride because of their nervous desire to turn themselves into a machine of power, called the Nation, and emulate other machines in their collective worldliness.”

(Sayak Dasgupta wanders around myLaw.net looking for things to do.)

Categories
Litigation

Open court hearings in review petitions after Mohd. Arif (2014)

SohamGoswami_DeathPenaltyProcedureThe Supreme Court of India has qualified the scope and extent of the right to life enshrined in Article 21, through a series of judgments from A.K. Gopalan v. State of Madras, AIR 1950 SC 27 to Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, AIR 1978 SC 597, ensuring that infringements upon life and personal liberty may only be made through “fair, just and reasonable procedure”.

So what of the procedure extinguishing life from a person who has been found guilty of capital offences? There is a comprehensive procedure under Indian law to ensure that a person sentenced to death may be afforded the maximum opportunities to present his side of the case so that he can hopefully be acquitted or his sentence commuted. A Court of Sessions, which is the competent court to record evidence and convict the accused, must cite its reasons in writing (Section 367 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, 1973) for awarding the death sentence and must then submit that decision to the state’s High Court for confirmation (Section 366). The sentence is considered valid only after confirmation and the convict may (if the High Court certifies the case under Article 134 of the Constitution) move the Supreme Court. The convict has a right of appeal if the High Court has either (a) overturned an acquittal or lesser conviction by the Court of Sessions and awarded the death sentence or (b) withdrawn proceedings before the Court of Sessions and conducted the same in the High Court.

The Supreme Court’s review jurisdiction

Under Article 137 of the Constitution, the Court may review cases decided by them. Order XL of the Supreme Court Rules, 1966 further require review to be done in chambers (that is, by judges, conferring amongst themselves without the assistance of counsel) and based on written pleadings made by counsel.

The Supreme Court in P.N. Eswara Iyer v. Registrar, Supreme Court of India, AIR 1980 SC 808, upheld the constitutional validity of Order XL, Rule 2 (requiring review in chambers), citing the heavy burden upon the Supreme Court to hear oral arguments in all cases within its jurisdiction.

The Supreme Court however, in Mohd. Arif v. Registrar, Supreme Court of India and Others, (2014) 9 SCC 737, dealt with the question of whether death sentence cases would form a class by themselves, meriting separate treatment.

The disagreement in Mohd. Arif

Writing for the majority, Justice Rohinton F. Nariman held that due to the nature of the death penalty, where:

1. the punishment is irreversible, and

2. due to lack of sentencing guidelines, it is left to various judges as to the quantum of sentence to be awarded (for instance, one judge might award the death sentence in a certain case, while another judge might sentence someone to life imprisonment for the same offence and same circumstances), sentencing was often arbitrary;

the highest standard of scrutiny was required in such cases.

Justice Rohinton F. Nariman interpreted Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer’s (the author in P.N. Eswara Iyer) ruling as allowing for such cases to be heard orally in open court. He quotes paragraph 29A of P.N. Eswara Iyer “…indeed, there is no judicial cry for extinguishment of oral argument altogether.”

However, Justice Chelameswar dissented, holding that the question of arbitrary sentencing did not arise as the same judges of the Supreme Court who passed the original judgment were required to sit on the review bench.

However, Mohd. Arif (the lead petitioner) was denied the opportunity to file a review petition himself. This was because he had already submitted a curative petition (the last option in the Supreme Court) and the Court held that to grant him a review petition now would infinitely delay the process. The review petition is filed and admittedor dismissed prior to the curative petition.

Eventually, a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court on January 19, 2016 allowed Arif to re-open his review petition on the ground that he would be the only person not receiving the benefit of a review petition, which would be unfair to him; further, the dismissal of the curative petition should not preclude the petitioner from receiving the benefit of a review petition in open court, no matter how slim the chance of success may be.

As one can see upon perusal of the judgment in Mohd. Arif, the purpose was to ensure that, no matter how slim, people receiving the death sentence should be given as many opportunities as permissible under the law for evidence to be re-appreciated. However, the problem that is apparent from the dissent of Justice Chelameswar is that ordinarily, the same Bench hearing the original case on merits deals with the review petition (unless any of the judges retire). It is unlikely therefore, that they would change their opinion on whether the convict should receive the death penalty; thus, the purpose of the review petition is not realised.

The purpose of the review bench, as is evident from Order XL of the Supreme Court Rules, is to merely check whether there is an error apparent on the face of the record. The composition of the bench should therefore, not matter, as the matter for appraisal should not lead to different conclusions. At the same time, the same judges having already looked into the matter once, would ordinarily not be willing to sit and review the whole case again.
Mohd. Arif is however, a pathbreaking judgment given its implications for prisoners on death row—that at the penultimate stage of proceedings at the Supreme Court, they are entitled to an open court hearing and reappreciation of evidence in their case argued by their lawyer. It remains to be seen, however, the manner in which Supreme Court deals with these petitions.

 

(Soham Goswami, currently in the third year at ILS Law College, Pune, is an intern at the Centre on the Death Penalty. The views expressed in this article are his alone.)

Categories
Litigation

Supervening circumstances and the commutation of a death sentence: A more definitive law from the Supreme Court

ProceduralLawOfTheDeathPenalty_RahulRamanIf the situation that prevailed at the time a sentence of death was delivered has changed, can the Supreme Court take those changed circumstances into account to commute a sentence of death? Less than two years ago, the Supreme Court in Shatrughan Chauhan v. Union of India, 2014 (3) SCC 1, looked into whether executing a death sentence notwithstanding the existence of such supervening circumstances would violate among other things, Article 21 of the Constitution. After weighing such circumstances in different petitions, it commuted the penalty of fifteen individuals to life imprisonment and laid down a more definitive law on the Court’s power of commutation.

The petitioners had claimed that the executive, while exercising its power under Articles 72 or 161, did not consider any supervening events. In a few previous decisions such as Triveniben (1989) and Jagdish v. State of Madhya Pradesh (2009), the Court had declared that it had a duty to protect a prisoner’s right to life till his last breath. This provided the Supreme Court with the legal basis to take supervening circumstances into consideration and those pleaded in Shatrughan Chauhan included delay, insanity, solitary confinement, and procedural lapses.

Delay in processing mercy petitions

The question of whether the executive’s delay in processing a mercy petition should be considered a supervening circumstance has troubled the Court for a long time. There is no stipulated time limit within which the executive has to dispose a mercy petition and often, there is inordinate delay.

Earlier, a division bench of the Supreme Court in T.V. Vatheeswaran v. State of Tamil Nadu, AIR 1983 SC 361, had held that a delay of two years in execution of a sentence after the judgment of the trial court would entitle the prisoner to plead for commutation of his sentence of death to life imprisonment. Soon after however, a three-judge bench in Sher Singh and Others v. Union of India, AIR 1983 SC 465, held that delay alone could not be a good enough ground for commutation of death sentence, and overruled the two-year delay rule. Nevertheless, this decision acknowledged a prisoner’s right to a fair procedure at all stages – trial, sentencing, and incarceration.

To resolve this apparent conflict, a constitution bench took up this issue in Triveniben v. State of Gujrat, 1988 (4) SCC 574. In a landmark verdict, the Court held that while an undue delay would entitle a punished individual to invoke Article 32, Vatheeswaran’s “two-year delay rule” was not correct.

The Court relied on this decision in Shatrughan Chauhan. It held that while considering the rejection of a clemency petition, the Court could not overlook the pain caused to the convict. Therefore, the Court was well within its judicial power under Article 21 read with Article 32 of the Constitution to hear a convict’s grievance and commute a death sentence to life imprisonment if it is found that that there had been undue, unexplained, and inordinate delay in execution due to the pendency of a mercy petition.

The Court decided not to lay down any compulsory period within which the President has to decide a mercy petition. While the Court would make such a determination on the facts and circumstances of individual cases, it suggested that the executive should itself weigh the aspect of delay while disposing of a mercy petition.

The Court also said that the decision of the Court in Devender Pal Singh Bhullar v. State (NCT) of Delhi, 2013 (6) SCC 195, which had disqualified cases under the Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, 1987 from scrutiny on account of delay, was per incuriam. Any person sentenced to death could avail “delay” as a supervening circumstance regardless of the offence and the statute under which he has been convicted. Later, the Supreme Court recognised this finding in Navneet Kaur v. State of NCT of Delhi, Curative Petition (Criminal) No. 88 of 2013 (Supreme Court) to commute Devender Pal Singh Bhullar’s death sentence to life imprisonment.

Insanity or mental illness

The next ground considered by the Court was that of “insanity” or “mental illness” as a supervening circumstance. The Court after referring to several international conventions like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights concluded that this was a valid supervening circumstance. It noted that once mental illness of the convicted individual is medically certified, executing him would be in violation of the international convention to which India was a party, and of Article 21 of the Constitution.

Solitary confinement

Despite underlining its own finding in Sunil Batra v. Delhi Administration and Others, 1978(4) SCC 494, the Supreme Court decided not to interfere on the ground of “solitary confinement” in Shatrughan Chauhan. Later however, the Allahabad High Court in People’s Union for Democratic Rights v. Union of India, 2015(2) ADJ 2015 and the Supreme Court in Ajay Kumar Pal v. Union of India, 2014(13) SCALE 762 held that “solitary confinement”, along with other factors, was a permissible supervening circumstance to commute death sentence to life imprisonment.

Procedural lapses

The final ground raised was that of “procedural lapses” made by the executive while disposing of mercy petitions. The Court held that the procedures prescribed for the Ministry of Home Affairs were a necessary requirement under Article 21 to treat the death row convicts fairly. It noted that the President should be provided with all the relevant material to assist him in disposing the mercy petitions. The concerned departments cannot give or seek piecemeal information regarding the petition to be decided. However, the scrutiny of a procedural anomaly would be done on a case-to-case basis.

The circumstances raised in Shatrughan Chauhan are not exhaustive. The addition (or removal) of supervening circumstances to this list would depend on the judicial attitudes to reconciling convict’s rights with those of the victim or the society. Further, despite the unambiguous decisions in Triveniben and Shatrughan Chauhan, it is entirely up to the Court to see on an individual basis, how to interpret ‘undue and unexplained’ delay and whether to permit it as a supervening circumstance.

(Rahul Raman is a Project Associate at the Centre on the Death Penalty, National Law University, Delhi.)

Categories
History Supreme Court of India

Amendments to shield eminent domain from the courts have left the Constitution without private property rights

Since Independence, there have been several special laws that have been used by both Union and state governments to acquire land Suhrith_Parthasarathyfrom private individuals. Many of them continue to exist. But, for more than a century, the Land Acquisition Act of 1894 has stood as the centrepiece of the Indian state’s policy of expropriation, used most frequently to acquire private property.

Viewed broadly, the 1894 statute canonised a power of eminent domain, which was thought to be a facet intrinsic to a sovereign. The law gave the authority to government to acquire private land for what the state perceived to be a public purpose, in exchange for a compensation, which, when determined under the process prescribed by the statute, was almost always grossly derisory.

The Union Minister for Rural Development in the UPA government, Jairam Ramesh (left), and Union Minister for Urban Development in the NDA government, Venkaiah Naidu, addressing press conferences on the land acquisition law in September, 2013 and March, 2015.

The Union Minister for Rural Development in the UPA government, Jairam Ramesh (left), and Union Minister for Urban Development in the NDA government, Venkaiah Naidu, addressing press conferences on the land acquisition law in September, 2013 and March, 2015 respectively.

It also allowed the state the authority to acquire land unbothered by the economic and social impact that the acquisition might have on the landowner. The statute did not prescribe any social or environmental impact assessment as a precondition for expropriation, and it also imposed no obligation on the government to rehabilitate those displaced by the acquisition. The lack of any safeguards in favour of the landowner effectively meant that the poor person’s land was viewed as the sole property of the state, as property that could be subjected to legally sanctioned fraud and plunder. It was in this backdrop that in early 2014, the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act, 2013 (“LARR Act”) was brought into force to replace the 1894 law.

The new act was designed to bring an end to a century-long form of oppression. It sought to define the public purpose, for which land could be acquired, with particular clarity; in cases where land was to be acquired for a private project, the consent of at least 80 per cent of the landowners was mandated; the state was barred from acquiring land for the purposes of establishing private hospitals and private educational institutions; a detailed social impact assessment (“SIA”) and an environmental impact assessment was mandated as a precondition to any acquisition; and, most crucially, compensation for lands acquired was to be fixed at four times the market value of the land, in cases where the property was situated in a rural area, and at two times the market value for properties situated in an urban area.

In all, the LARR Act, which was enacted on a largely bipartisan platform, was meant to usher an era of a more participative democratic process, where the people could have a genuine say in how their land is used. Unfortunately, these changes were far too short-lived.

Immediately upon assuming office, the Narendra Modi-led government criticised the LARR Act as a measure aimed at thwarting development. The premise of the new government’s argument was that expropriation of private property through powers of eminent domain stimulates economic growth, and brings about greater commercial expansion. The LARR Act, as they saw it, was simply antithetical to commonly understood notions of eminent domain.

Their solution, while awaiting parliamentary approval to amend the law, was to bring forth an ordinance. This ordinance, which amends the LARR Act, among other things, does the following. One, it removes a previous bar on acquisitions by the state for the purposes of establishing private hospitals and educational institutions. Two, it removes the necessity to secure the consent of landowners when property is acquired for the purposes of redistribution to private entities. Three, it eliminates the requirement for an SIA when land is acquired for a special category of purposes, including for the purposes of national security and the defence of India, and for purposes of establishing “industrial corridors,” and “infrastructure” projects.

As is plainly evident, the proposed amendments, which are presently in force through the operation of the ordinance, seeks to revert us to a slightly modified version of the 1894 law, by virtually removing the spine of the LARR Act. The changes amount, as G. Sampath, wrote in The Mint, to what the Marxist geographer David Harvey might have described as “accumulation through dispossession.” The question now is: would these changes, if ultimately enacted by Parliament, be constitutionally sustainable?

Eminent domain and the constitutional right to property

The Constitution of India, as originally enacted, on the one hand, guaranteed to citizens a right to property, while, on the other hand, implanted in the state an express authority to take property through an exercise of a power of eminent domain. Article 19(1)(f), subject to reasonable restrictions in the public interest, guaranteed to all citizens the right to acquire, hold and dispose off property. Article 31 provided that any acquisition of property by the state may be done only for a public purpose and upon payment of compensation, through a validly enacted law. What this meant was that once a person’s privately owned property was acquired by the state in accordance with Article 31, his or her right to hold the property subject to reasonable restrictions under Article 19 was rendered otiose.

In the earliest cases that emanated in post-Independence India out of the exercise by the state of its power to acquire property, the Supreme Court tended to view Article 31 as an embodiment of a power of eminent domain, which inheres in the state as a sovereign.

The term “eminent domain,” wrote Justice Mahajan in State of Bihar v. Kameshwar Singh, (1952) 1 SCR 889, could be traced back to the year 1625 and to the great jurist Hugo Grotius’s work, De Jure Belli et Pacis. “The property of subjects is under the eminent domain of the State, so that the State or he who acts for it may use and even alienate and destroy such property,” wrote Grotius, “not only in the case of extreme necessity, in which even private persons have a right over the property of others, but for ends of public utility, to which ends these who founded civil society must be supposed to have intended that private ends should give way. But it is to be added that when this is done the State is bound to make good the loss to those who lose their property.”

The meaning of eminent domain, in its irreducible terms, was, therefore, according to Justice Mahajan, (a) a “power to take” land (b) “without the owner’s consent,” (c) “for the public use,” after payment of compensation. In the initial years, the power, thus understood, seemed to impede the state in implementing its socialistically driven policies of expropriating land owned by zamindars more than it benefited it. Yet, as we have seen in the decades since, the very idea of viewing eminent domain as a power that is intrinsic to a sovereign has proved problematic. (Usha Ramanathan, “A Word on Eminent Domain”, Displaced by Development – Confronting Marginalisation and Gender Injustice).

Justice Vivian Bose, however, notably warned against using a “doubtful” term such as eminent domain to understand the Indian state’s power to acquire property. Doubtful, not because the term is “devoid of meaning,” but because it enjoys a different shade of meaning in different countries. “In my opinion, it is wrong to assume,” he wrote in Dwarkadas Shrinivas of Bombay v. The Sholapur Spinning & Weaving Co. Ltd., AIR 1954 SC119, “that these powers are inherent in the State in India and then to see how far the Constitution regulates and fits in with them. We have to interpret the plain provisions of the Constitution and it is for jurists and students of law, not for Judges to see whether our Constitution also provides for these powers and it is for them to determine whether the shape which they take in India resemble any of the varying forms which they assume in other countries.”

The final draft of Article 31, which constitutionalised the power of eminent domain, was arrived at purely through compromise. There were some in the Constituent Assembly who believed that land had to be usurped from zamindars, without payment of any compensation (or at any rate, by paying only a minimal, meagre amount) to help herald a more equal and just society, while there were others who argued for a strong protection of property rights, requiring the fulfilment of elements of due process prior to any expropriation. The ultimate provision, contained in Article 31, which was almost literally adopted from Section 299 of the Government of India Act, 1935, as Namita Wahi has pointed out, pleased neither group. It merely transferred the debate on the right to property to the court halls around the country. And, contrary to popular discourse, barring few instances where the courts have restrained Parliament’s powers, by objecting to specific acquisition laws, judges have predominantly allowed the state substantial leeway in exercising its power of eminent domain.

Amending the Constitution, protecting eminent domain from the courts

The Supreme Court of India

The Supreme Court of India

Yet, it was in fear of intervention by the courts that the First Amendment to India’s Constitution (whose validity was upheld by the Supreme Court in Sankari Prasad Singh Deo v. Union of India, AIR 1951 SC 458) was introduced in 1951, inserting not only Article 31A, which immunised land reform laws from challenges against violation of fundamental rights, but also Article 31B and concomitantly Schedule IX to the Constitution, which protected 13 particular legislation from challenge under Part III of the Constitution, with added retrospective effect. By virtue of these amendments, the crux of the challenge to the Bihar Land Reforms Act, 1950, which had been struck down by the Patna High Court, prompting the first amendment, was effectively rendered futile. Nonetheless, the Supreme Court, in State of Bihar v. Kameshwar Singh, (1952) 1 SCR 889, found that the Act, which sought to redistribute estates in Bihar, was based on a legitimate public purpose, and was therefore in consonance with Article 31.

Immediately after Kameshwar Singh’s case, the Supreme Court rendered a judgment, in State of West Bengal v. Bela Banerjee, AIR 1954 SC 170, which was significant in its elaboration of the importance of the right to property (Seervai, Constitutional Law of India), and which ultimately led to the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment. Here, a provision of the West Bengal Land Development and Planning Act, 1948 was challenged as violating Article 31, as it limited the compensation payable to the market value of the land as on December 31, 1946.

The word “compensation,” as used in Article 31, the Supreme Court ruled, referred to a “just equivalent of what the owner has been deprived of,” and, therefore it found that the provision offended the Constitution. As a result of this decision, Parliament introduced the fourth constitutional amendment and altered Article 31(2) to provide that a law under which compensation is determined for acquisition of land could not be questioned on the ground that such compensation is inadequate.

This amendment, as the legendary constitutional law scholar H.M. Seervai wrote, was considered in four different cases, P. Vajravelu Mudaliar v. Special Deputy Collector, Madras, AIR 1965 SC 1017, Union of India v. Metal Corporation of India, AIR 1967 SC 637, State of Gujarat v. Shantilal Mangaldas, AIR 1969 SC 634, and RC Cooper v. Union of India, AIR 1970 SC 564 (“the Bank Nationalisation Case”). Each of these cases contradicted the other on the issue of compensation under Article 31. Ultimately, it was the decision in the Bank Nationalisation Case, which was heard by a bench of ten judges, that proved most telling, rendering the fourth amendment’s purport nugatory, and reverted the law to the position established previously by the court in Bela Banerjee. The Supreme Court held in the Bank Nationalisation Case that the word compensation as used in Article 31, even after the fourth amendment, continued to denote a just equivalent of what the landowner had been deprived of. As had become common by now, when a court’s ruling tended to affect the ideology of the government in power, what resulted was a constitutional amendment: in this case, the 25th amendment.

Through this, Article 31(2) was altered, and the word “compensation” was replaced with the word “amount”; acquisitions under Article 31 were expressly removed from being subject to the right guaranteed under Article 19(1)(f), as was held in the Bank Nationalisation case; and laws giving effect to the directive principles contained in clauses (b) and (c) of Article 39 could no longer be questioned on the ground that they violated the rights guaranteed in Articles 14, 19 or 31.

Eventually, the Supreme Court in Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, AIR 1973 SC 1461, struck down the last limb of the 25th amendment alone. Here, a 13-judge-bench famously held that constitutional amendments could not be used as a tool to abrogate the basic structure of the Constitution: in this case, the power of the courts to judicially review Parliamentary law.

For the purposes of the right to property, though, it was Justice Khanna, whose opinion in Kesavananda proved the most decisive, that continues to resonate. He held that the right to property was not a part of the basic structure in his efforts to illustrate the fact that fundamental rights could, in limited circumstances, be annulled through constitutional amendment.

The jagged hole left by the 44th amendment

The decision in Kesavananda heralded an era of a battle between the government and the court over who holds the ultimate authority to interpret the Constitution. The give and take between Parliament and the Supreme Court may not quite have completely thwarted the state’s program to bring forth land reforms—if anything, the courts sought to place the odd impediment that they found was mandated under the Constitution.

But governments, impatient as they were, thought it necessary to bring forth a plethora of constitutional amendments aimed at placing land laws completely beyond the scope of judicial review. Ultimately, in 1978, the Janata Party, which had come into power following the Indira Gandhi-enforced Emergency, through the 44th constitutional amendment, removed altogether the guarantee of the right to property as a fundamental right. Both Article 19(1)(f) and Article 31 were completely obliterated. In their place, Article 300A was introduced, according the right to property the mere non-fundamental status of a legal right. These amendments, as Seervai argued, failed to grasp that Articles 19(1)(f) and 31 “were so closely interwoven with the whole fabric of our Constitution that those rights cannot be torn out without leaving a jagged hole…”

In the short run, the 44th amendment might have even helped in bringing forth more equivalence in land ownership, as desired by the government at the time. But, during the decades that followed, with an atmosphere of neo-liberalism taking over the Indian polity, the amendment has only contributed towards increasing discrimination. The power of eminent domain has been regularly abused to serve private interests. As Namita Wahi has pointed out, a number of measures have been introduced to place property at the hand of select institutions and corporations, often transcending constraints of public purpose contained in the original doctrine of eminent domain. (Namita Wahi, “State, Private Property and the Supreme Court”, Frontline).

For instance, “with the enactment of the Special Economic Zones Act in 2005,” wrote Wahi, “the acquisition of land by government to hand over to private industry which had happened in an ad hoc manner in previous decades became official government policy.” The meaning of “public purpose” has been expanded to absurd lengths, and different governments have overseen the most arbitrary expropriation of land, particularly from farmers, through the archaic, and draconian, Land Acquisition Act of 1894. These acquisitions have been rarely, if ever, disturbed by the courts, and even the compensation paid to individual landowners has been seldom enhanced.

What’s more, state governments also enacted their own special legislation to acquire land, bypassing, in the process, even the minimal safeguards contained in the central law.

Thus far, the Supreme Court has not ruled on the merits of the validity of the 44th constitutional amendment. It has only occasionally taken the pains to point out that the removal of the right to property from Part III has accorded substantial leeway to the state in expropriating land. (See for example, KT Plantation Pvt Ltd. v. State of Karnataka, (2011) 9 SCC 1.) Most of the Supreme Court’s decisions seem to indicate that it too has been equally buoyed by the supposed joys of liberalisation.

When viewed in this context, the LARR Act of 2013 represented a substantial breakthrough. It sought to realign the nature of property in India, by guaranteeing to citizens a right to own and hold land, which ought to ideally enjoy fundamental status. To the extent that it provided not only for an enhanced and more just compensation, but also for a social and environmental impact assessment, and for a voice to landowners, the LARR Act was a decidedly successful piece of legislation. It is therefore that the present ordinance, which seeks to remove many of the integral facets of the LARR Act, has to be considered as an anathema. To make things worse, by virtue of the 44th amendment, the state can today argue convincingly that the ordinance is legally valid and that it stands on substantial constitutional bedrock.

None of the diktats of the LARR Act, which have been removed by the ordinance, can be considered as constitutionally mandated, if we were to assume that the 44th amendment has accorded the state a carte blanche over private property, as some Supreme Court decisions seem to suggest. (See for example, Jilubhai Nanbhai Khachar v. State of Gujarat, AIR 1995 SC 142).

A historic re-interpretation of the Constitution is required

The state, unless convinced by the abiding public sentiment on the matter, would argue in the case of the proposed amendments: firstly, that the consent of landowners and the conduct of an SIA are simply not required as a matter of constitutional guarantee, and secondly that in the absence of an express prohibition of acquisition by the state for private purposes, the argument that the ordinance violates traditional notions of eminent domain, in allowing acquisition of land for private educational institutions and private hospitals, does not pass muster.

To negate such submissions, we would require the Supreme Court to shed its apathy, and to interpret the Constitution in its right spirit. The court will have to reconsider the understanding of eminent domain that has pervaded its jurisprudence, over the years. The removal of the fundamental right to property, by the 44th amendment, cannot be considered as a final nail in the coffin of rights over land.

To rebut the notion that eminent domain inheres in a sovereign, we might require an intervention that transcends mere judicial review, an intervention that is democratically justifiable. But what the courts can do is to examine Article 14, and the basic guarantee to the people of equal protection of the laws. Interpreted in its finest light, the right to equality ought to impose a superior obligation on the state to protect private property, and to give people a genuine say in how their land is used. To not hold so would negate the very idea of citizenship.

(Suhrith Parthasarathy is an advocate practising at the Madras High Court.)

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Sweet sixty-five

NoticeAndStayAdityaVerma_SupremeCourtcolumnIn the eleven months between December, 2013 and October, 2014, of the thirty Supreme Court judges in office at the moment, eleven will turn sixty-five and retire. Unsurprisingly, due to the staggered increase in the strength of Supreme Court judges from eight to thirty-one since 1950, this is the highest rate of retirement in the history of the institution by number. Even in terms of percentage (approximately thirty-seven), the proportion is among the highest for any equivalent period (including resignations and deaths in office).

Supreme Court judges who will retire between October 2013 and December 2014

These eleven judges currently preside over all but four of the fifteen benches of the Supreme Court.

Following the convention of seniority, we should expect three judges to hold the office of Chief Justice over this period — the incumbent Justice P. Sathasivam, followed by Justice R. M. Lodha, and then by Justice H. L. Dattu.

While their sheer number makes these changes significant, it is difficult to speculate if they will lead to a change in the institutional character or overall judicial policy of the Supreme Court. Even in administrative and procedural aspects of Supreme Court practice, where the Chief Justice has discretion, due to the relatively short terms of the individual office bearers, it is tough to consistently implement new policies over a reasonable period of time and assess results.

If the Judicial Appointments Commission starts to function during this period, it will provide an opportunity to analyse what rules and conventions it creates for itself, and how it follows them.

From the lawyers’ perspective, there will be some uncertainty about the fate of cases listed for final disposal or regular hearing before particular judges, if arguments in such cases are expected to take more than a week or two, for instance. The quick succession of retirements will pose a serious logistical challenge, particularly to ensure that part-heard cases do not have to be re-argued ab initio before a new bench due to unforeseen circumstances, and that judges have sufficient time to deliberate and write detailed judgements, where necessary. There may also be cause to be wary of cheeky requests for adjournment not explicitly intended to avoid a case being heard before a particular judge!

One may wonder: why do judges retire? Why at 65? Why do they not have the option of continuing as long as they are physically and mentally fit for the role? In theory, Article 128 of the Constitution provides a mechanism for a retired judge to sit and act as a judge of the Supreme Court. In practice, this provision may just as well not exist.

GeorgeBurns_RetirementAt65

The idea that judges should retire is neither universal nor consistently followed across the world. For instance, appointment to the United States Supreme Court is for the lifetime of the judge (unless a judge resigns or is removed upon impeachment).

ThurgoodMarshall_SCOTUS_die_at_110_lifetime_appointmentA general argument may be raised that not having an age of retirement allows too much power to an individual judge over a long period of time, and, therefore, change is necessary. There may even be a chance that a judge may wish to continue in office without being physically or mentally fit for the role. On the contrary, in India, where the Supreme Court does not sit en banc, the power that an individual judge has, may be limited in practice. The risk of a judge wishing to stay on the bench for the sake of it may be speculative.

In the respective courts of last resort in many other countries, such as the U.K., Australia, and Canada, retirement ages of judges range between seventy and seventy-five. The Justice Venkatachaliah report (2002) recommended sixty-eight as the age of retirement of judges of the Supreme Court of India. The issue of the appropriate age for retirement of judges was discussed at length in the Constituent Assembly Debates as well. Though he eventually agreed with sixty-five in 1949, an excerpt from Jawaharlal Nehru’s speech is a good starting point for the debate:

This business of fixing age-limits in India in the past was, I believe, governed by entirely the service view. The British Government here started various services, the I.C.S. which was almost manned entirely by Britishers and then later on some Indians came in, and other services. The whole conception of Government was something revolving round the interests of the services. No doubt, these services served the country; I do not say anything against that. But, still, the primary consideration was the service and all these rules were framed accordingly.

With regard to judges, and Federal Court Judges especially, we cannot proceed on the lines of the normal administrative services… A young man may be exceedingly good, an old man may be bad. But the point is if an old man has experience and is thoroughly fit, mentally and otherwise, then it is unfortunate and it is a waste from the State’s point of view to push him aside, or force him to be pushed aside, and put in some one in his place who has neither the experience nor the talent, perhaps. We are going to require a fairly large number of High Court Judges. Of course the number of Supreme Court Judges will be rather limited. Nevertheless, there are going to be more and more openings, and the personnel at our disposal is somewhat limited.

Today, if there are more cases than what a thrity-one-strong Supreme Court can decide in a reasonable amount of time, and there are judges who will be of retirement age or older but are able and willing to serve, at the very least, both thrity-one and sweet sixty-five merit a rethink.

(Aditya Verma practices as an Advocate at the Supreme Court of India. He is an alumnus of NLSIU, Bangalore, and is admitted as a solicitor in England and Wales.)