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Govt & Politics
Calling Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud “one of the most enlightened souls” to become the CJI, who “brings on the table huge experience, commitment, passion, and is enormously talented”, Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar has hailed the “reach of the Indian judiciary” and said that it has no parallel.
Addressing the Indian diaspora in London on Friday night, he said, “Look at the orders — it takes him (CJI) no time to grant relief to an ordinary man. Where do you have a judiciary as involved as in India?”
This comes against the backdrop of a debate earlier this year on the issue of appointments to higher judiciary. With the government questioning the current Collegium system, and the Supreme Court defending it, Dhankhar, Chairman of Rajya Sabha, had said that he does not subscribe to the Kesavananda Bharati case verdict, which said Parliament can amend the Constitution but not its basic structure.
He had asserted that Parliamentary sovereignty and autonomy are essential for the survival of democracy and cannot be permitted to be compromised by the executive or judiciary.
Addressing the 83rd All India Presiding Officers Conference in Jaipur on January 11, Dhankhar said the judiciary cannot intervene in lawmaking. “In 1973, a wrong precedent (galat parampara) started.
In response, CJI Chandrachud had called the basic structure doctrine a “North Star” that “guides and gives certain direction to the interpreters and implementers of the Constitution when the path ahead is convoluted”.
Express Network
SC is not Supreme Court of Tilak Marg it is apex court of India for India: CJI (Page no. 9)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
Amid a demand to set up benches of Orissa High Court in southern and western parts of the state, Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud said technology has obliterated the need for benches of the High Court because there is a bench in each district that has a virtual court.
With several high courts having started livestreaming proceedings, the CJI said this has a flip side, too. “We judges need to be trained ourselves, because we are now working in the age of social media,” he said. “Every word we say in the court is up in the public realm.”
CJI Chandrachud, who was speaking at the National Conference on Digitization, Paperless Courts and e-Initiatives at the Odisha Judicial Academy in Cuttack, said: “Every word which we judges say in court is up in the public realm in the age of social media. This places new demands on us as judges.”
He hailed Orissa HC’s efforts to set up virtual courts in 20 of the state’s 30 districts, where lawyers can address the HC from their districts. Setting up virtual courts across districts has enabled Orissa HC to be “truly the representative of the entire state” and ensure that there is access to justice for citizens across the state who want access to the high court.
Opinion
From basic structure to collegium: A shared thread (Page no. 13)
(GS Paper 2, Judiciary)
The Supreme Court’s “basic structure doctrine” recently completed its 50th year. On April 24, 1973, in the landmark Kesavananda Bharati v Union of India, a 13-judge bench of the Supreme Court invented the doctrine that mandates the court to review and restrict Parliament’s power to amend the Constitution’s fundamental principles.
But a key fallout of this ruling, something that is borne out by the events that followed it, was the executive’s interference in the appointment of judges — something that has shaped Indian judiciary over the last five decades.
The Kesavananda ruling was delivered a day before then Chief Justice Sarva Mitra Sikri was due to retire on April 25, 1973.
Stitching together a narrow majority of 7-6, CJI Sirki led the majority while Justice A N Ray led the minority judges.
On April 26, 1973, breaking the convention of seniority, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi appointed Justice A N Ray as Chief Justice of India.
This meant that three judges who were in line before him — J M Sheelat, K S Hegde and A N Grover — were superseded. The three judges immediately went on leave and subsequently resigned from their offices.
World
Indian scientist led team witnesses star engulfing Jupiter sized planet (Page no. 14)
(GS Paper 3, Science and Technology)
In a first, scientists have witnessed a bloated star in our own galaxy swallowing a planet. This planetary feast is believed to have occurred near Aquila, an eagle-like constellation, located about 12,000 light-years from Earth.
The Sun-like star, identified as ZTF SLRN-2020, gobbled up the entire hot gas-giant planet, nearly measuring in size that of Jupiter.
In a joint study, a team of researchers from California Institute of Technology, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Universities of Harvard and Cambridge, and other noted institutions, confirmed the death of a planet following an event first discovered in May 2020.
Life cycles of stars have been well studied and understood for some decades now. Older stars, eventually, ingest the nearby planets (like Mercury, Venus with respect to our Sun), too, is scientifically known.
But it was considered extremely challenging to provide experimental evidence proving the death of a planet,” Kishalay De, lead author of the study published in the journal Nature.