Was India’s top judge an icon or a pushover?

How will historical past choose my tenure?

That’s a query Dhananjay Yashwant Chandrachud, who retired as India’s fiftieth chief justice on Sunday, requested simply weeks earlier than he completed his time period.

Justice Chandrachud stated his thoughts was “closely preoccupied with fears and anxieties concerning the future and the previous”.

“I discover myself pondering: Did I obtain all the things I got down to do? How will historical past choose my tenure? Might I’ve achieved issues in another way? What legacy will I leave for future generations of judges and authorized professionals?” he stated.

The soul looking got here at a time when many in India are additionally debating what legacy he leaves behind.

Justice Chandrachud served greater than eight years as a high court docket choose and as chief justice for the previous two years. He presided over one of the crucial highly effective Supreme Courts on the planet with jurisdiction over India’s 1.4 billion residents.

The highest court docket is the ultimate court docket of enchantment, the ultimate interpreter of the structure and its judgements, that are binding on all different courts in India, routinely make information – though judges seldom do.

However Justice Chandrachud, generally described as India’s “first movie star choose” and a “rockstar choose”, has routinely hit the headlines.

Based on Arghya Sengupta of the Vidhi Centre For Authorized Coverage, the jurist was India’s most prolific chief justice who wrote 93 judgements – greater than his final 4 predecessors put collectively – together with some on issues of seminal significance. He additionally made big strides when it comes to digitisation and livestreaming of court docket hearings – making them extra accessible to residents.

However a number of the latest protection has additionally been unflattering, with critics saying he wasn’t assertive sufficient and his tenure has been disappointing.

The Harvard-educated choose has many firsts to his title – he was the youngest to move a excessive court docket and his two-year-term was the longest for a chief justice in additional than a decade. He’s additionally the one chief justice whose father additionally served within the position.

Throughout his years within the Supreme Court docket, he developed a repute for being a progressive, liberal choose recognized for his nuanced and considerate judgements associated to issues of liberty, freedom of speech and gender and LGBT rights.

He was a part of landmark rulings that decriminalised homosexuality and allowed menstruating ladies into Kerala’s Sabarimala shrine. His utterances on the suitable to privateness and proper to dissent had been extensively praised.

So, his elevation to be India’s high choose in November 2022 was welcomed by senior legal professionals, activists and residents with many expressing a “robust hope that underneath his management the court docket will rise to higher heights”.

It was a time when India’s Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Social gathering (BJP) authorities was on the brink of safe a 3rd time period within the 2024 basic election.

Opposition events, activists and sections of the press had been accusing the federal government of concentrating on them, with international rights organisations saying Indian democracy was underneath risk.

Though the federal government denied any wrongdoing, a lot of India’s high teachers, rights activists and widespread opposition leaders discovered themselves in jail and the nation stored sliding on the worldwide press freedom index. (The federal government has at all times rejected such rankings, saying they’re biased in opposition to India.)

Senior lawyer Kamini Jaiswal says Justice Chandrachud’s appointment had come at “an important juncture as a number of the final chief justices had left underneath a cloud of darkish spots and the place had been denigrated with severe allegations”.

“So, we thought Justice Chandrachud would use his erudition and sensible thoughts to do numerous good for the residents. However he has been disappointing,” she stated.

Senior Supreme Court docket lawyer Chander Uday Singh says his file is “a blended bag”.

“In his judgments, he would lay down the regulation brilliantly which could possibly be used as a precedent for future circumstances. However at any time when the state was closely invested in any subject, he failed to carry energy to account, so the state bought away with what that they had set out of obtain.”

As an example, he factors out that the court docket struck down a authorities scheme that allowed folks to make nameless donations to political events, calling it unconstitutional and unlawful. “However then he didn’t maintain anybody accountable for the illegality.”

Equally, when it got here to a political disaster within the western state of Maharashtra or Delhi’s energy wrestle with the federal authorities, his judgments tended to favour the federal government, he provides.

“There was hope that via his judgments, he would set issues proper in a rustic that’s underneath a robust majoritarian authorities. However he fell quick.”

A number of high legal professionals have additionally criticised Justice Chandrachud for what he did because the “grasp of the roster” by failing to successfully stop the extended incarceration of political prisoners – resulting in the demise of a few of them with out ever getting bail. This occurred regardless of Justice Chandrachud saying that bail needs to be the norm and never the exception.

And as he neared his retirement, Justice Chandrachud additionally made headlines for what he didn’t within the court docket, however exterior.

In September, there was uproar over a viral video that confirmed him praying at house with PM Modi throughout a Hindu non secular competition.

Ms Jaiswal stated by publicising the picture, “a message was being despatched that the chief justice is near the PM”. Attorneys, former judges, opposition politicians and many voters additionally criticised him saying “the presence of a politician at a non-public occasion erodes the perception of impartiality of the judiciary”.

One other burst of criticism greeted Justice Chandrachud’s remark final month when he stated he had requested God for an answer to the vexed Babri Mosque-Ram temple dispute. “I sat earlier than the deity and advised him he wanted to discover a resolution and he gave it to me,” he stated.

The remark led to a firestorm of criticism, not totally sudden because the mosque-temple dispute has been one of the crucial contentious and religiously polarising points in trendy India.

The mosque was demolished by Hindu mobs in 1992. A five-judge bench, which included Justice Chandrachud, dominated in 2019 that the demolition was unlawful, however nonetheless gave the disputed land to Hindus and a separate web site for the mosque to be constructed. Earlier this yr, PM Modi inaugurated a grand new temple on the web site, fulfilling a longstanding promise by his social gathering.

So, no shock then that Justice Chandrachud’s remark, seen by many as non secular, was extensively criticised.

Retired excessive court docket choose Anjana Prakash advised HW news that his remark was “dramatic, filmy and laughable and it had introduced down the extent of judiciary”.

“A choose has to resolve circumstances on rules of regulation. The place does God come right into a judgement? Apart from, folks have completely different gods. And if a justice from one other religion had stated this, would the response be the identical?” she requested.

Justice Prakash and different critics puzzled if he was cosying as much as the federal government for a post-retirement project.

Within the days previous his retirement, Justice Chandrachud addressed a number of the criticism in interactions with the media.

“The separation of powers doesn’t imply antagonistic relations between the manager and the judiciary, it doesn’t imply that they can not meet,” he stated at an occasion by the Indian Categorical newspaper, including that such conferences weren’t used “to chop offers”.

“The last word proof of our good behaviour lies within the written phrase – in our judgements. Is it in keeping with the structure or not?”

Justice Chandrachud stated his touch upon searching for divine steering was as a result of “I’m an individual of religion” and “to impute motives to judges will not be proper”.

He added that courts had been going through strain “from lobbies and strain teams” and they’d reward a call important of the federal government, but when he dominated in favour of the federal government, they questioned his independence.

At his farewell on Friday, the outgoing chief justice stated he was maybe India’s most trolled choose, however his “shoulders are broad sufficient to just accept all criticism”.

And on the weekend, he advised Times of India that he believed he had “left the system higher than I discovered it”.

“I’m retiring with a way of satisfaction,” he stated.

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