The silver maces and panic buttons: The impeachment story of Justice V. Ramaswami

AFTER THE BAISAKI OF 1989, one day we, in the Lawyers Collective, were sitting in the house of Indira Jaising at Golflinks at Delhi. We just came across an article by Kuldeep Nayyar on the audit objections by the Accountant General (‘AG’) of Punjab raised against the extravagant expenditures incurred by the then Chief Justice of the Punjab & Haryana High Court, Justice V. Ramaswamy from Tamil Nadu. Suddenly it occurred to us that we must go deeper into the issue. Immediately we hopped onto the Shatabdi Express leaving in the morning to Chandigarh. We had no actual plans. By mid day when the mercury levels were increasing, our team of five headed by Indira Jaising landed in Chandigarh in the afternoon. We proceeded to Sector 1 where the magnificent High Court was situated. Some friends in the High Court bar recognised us and immediately took us to the bar room where a meeting was in progress. We were also allowed to be seated in the meeting. To our surprise, the bar was discussing the increased inbreeding and nepotism among judges in favouring the near and dear. Many emphasised the setting of the ‘uncle syndrome’ of the bench. In the end, the meeting passed a resolution, which if not laudable enough for passing the policy of transferring one third of the judges to other high courts also noted that in Chandigarh, hundred percent were to be out from outside only. After the meeting, we slowly broached the subject of the audit report against Justice Ramaswami and the article by Kuldeep Nayyar. Obviously, no one was surprised about the extravaganza and started giving many tales about Justice Ramaswamy. Within a few hours, we met several advocates, social activists, and some bureaucrats. To our surprise, we also had an audience with some of the senior judges of the High Court who were frank enough to discuss the issues of administrative misbehaviour of their chief justice. At the time of our visit, Justice Ramaswami had gone back to his home town and we had a peep into his official residence where we could see the opulence and indiscrete expenditure incurred in renovating the residence. The subject matter of such expenditures also formed part of the AG audit conducted. To our luck, we got a copy of the audit objections raised by the AG of Punjab. .To our surprise, we also had an audience with some of the senior judges of the High Court who were frank enough to discuss the issues of administrative misbehaviour of their chief justice..Before going into the administrative extravaganza indulged by Justice Ramaswami, a brief outline on his life is also necessary. Justice Ramaswami was born in Ramanathapuram district in Tamil Nadu. After registering as a lawyer in 1953, he married the daughter of K. Veeraswami, who was a senior judge of the Madras High Court then. His name was recommended and he was appointed as a judge in the Madras High Court in 1971. When he was appointed a judge, the practice was that the chief justice could recommend anyone’s name. The chief justice can also accept the names proposed by the State government. If the chief justice and the chief minister had a consensus, a person could become a judge without any problem. That was why Mr Ramaswami could become a judge when he was 42 years old.After serving as a judge in Chennai for sixteen years, Justice Ramaswami was appointed as chief justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 1987. That was the period when Punjab was in the grip of terrorist activities. Those who were appointed as chief justice of the High Court there were given security and some financial benefits. After assuming office in the High Court that was located at Chandigarh, he received encomiums from the judges and earned the intense dislike of his brother judges.When he attended the office on the first day, he found to his dismay that there were no bearers to carry the silver mace walking in front of him to the court and return to his chamber after his court work. His mind travelled back to his Chennai days where every judge heads to their court with the mace bearers shouting ‘oosh oosh’ in a regal style and the crowds in the walkaways suddenly withdraw to the borders making it appear as the Noah’s Ark. Soon, he remembered the shop in which Madras High Court placed orders for silver maces and made an order for seven maces from M/s. P.ORR & Sons at Chennai. The one meant for the Chief Justice was to be specially designed with an ornamental head on its top. .Breaking on The Leaflet: Justice Yashwant Varma probe report.Little did Justice Ramaswami realise that for the purchase of any item, tenders have to be floated. After all, who can challenge a chief justice’s decision? In his anxiety to get the maces at the earliest, he even got them airlifted to Chandigarh, bypassing the relevant rules. After the maces reached Chandigarh from Chennai, at a meeting of the judges, he emphasised the need to follow traditional practices and announced that a bearer would hold aloft the mace and precede the judges while they were walking to the court hall. The other judges were shocked with this and in a letter dated August 18, 1988, they wrote, “You will remember that most of us told you later too that we were opposed to the introduction of maces. Maces are but a relic of the Imperial past and out of tune with the socialistic pattern of society.” From that day onwards, Justice Ramaswami’s headaches increased. After his twenty two month stint at Chandigarh, Justice Ramaswami got elevated to the Supreme Court in October 1989. The Punjab’s AG found during the audit that there were irregularities in administrative expenses incurred when Mr Ramaswami was the Chief Justice and that proper procedures were not followed and raised audit objections. The Accountant General sought the High Court’s opinion, which directed that the expenses that were incurred without due procedure being followed should be recovered by his salary.After returning from Chandigarh, we discussed the details in the Audit Report with advocates in Chennai. We organised a public meeting at the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan in Chennai. N. Ram, the editor of The Hindu, senior advocates Indira Jaising, N.T. Vanamamalai, K.G. Kannabiran, and K.T. Palpandian and advocate S. Baladandayuthapani and I addressed the meeting. The meeting adopted a unanimous resolution demanding the impeachment of Justice V. Ramaswami for the misbehaviour committed during his tenure as the chief justice of Punjab & Haryana High Court. While the media covered our meeting, a leader of the Dravidar Kazhagam, a small political group headed by K.Veeramani, wrote an article in their daily ‘Viduthalai’(in the April 11, 1990 issue). In that, he severely criticised the meeting and those who participated in it. .Indira Jaising, K.G. Kannabiran and I jointly wrote on irregularities in the judiciary along with publishing the full copy of the Accountant General’s audit report in The Lawyers magazine (in April 1990)..In the first essay, he wrote: “Brahmins and those who are against the philosophy of reservation and social justice are jealous of his growth and promotion and have been plotting for a long time with a few ‘Vibhishanas’ to bring a bad name to him.” This was a new angle of attack launched against our campaign. Indira Jaising, K.G. Kannabiran and I jointly wrote on irregularities in the judiciary along with publishing the full copy of the Accountant General’s audit report in The Lawyers magazine (in April 1990). A letter was also sent to the then Chief Justice of India Sabyasachi Mukherjee enclosing the article and the audit objections. To our surprise, we received an immediate reply from the Chief Justice, in which he said he would look into the complaints mentioned in the article. A reference to this was made in a subsequent judgment (Additional District and Sessions Judge ‘X’, Vs. Registrar General, High Court of Madhya Pradesh, 2015 (4) SCC 91). In that it was stated, “I had received a communication from the editor of a magazine enclosing there with a copy of the April 1990 issue of the magazine The Lawyers, stating that it contained the full text of the audit report of the Chandigarh Administration”.The then attorney general Soli Sorabjee, former attorney general K. Parasaran, president of the Supreme Court Advocates’ Association K.K. Venugopal and former president of the Supreme Court Advocates’ Association Dr. Chitale met the Chief Justice of India and referred to the irregularities highlighted by the Accountant General. They wanted action to be taken against V .Ramaswami, who by then had become a Supreme Court judge. The then law minister also met him and told him that the MPs had urged him for action to be taken against the judge. The Supreme Court reopened after the summer recess of 1990. On July 20, the CJI Sabyasachi Mukherjee, as soon as he occupied his seat in Court Hall No.1, made a statement in front of the large gathering of advocates and litigants. He said that he did not have powers to take action against the judge, while at the same time there was basis for the audit objections and that he had already spoken to Justice Ramaswami about it and had advised him to go on leave till the internal enquiry was completed. Thus, the concept of “in-house inquiry” was given birth to. Justice Ramaswami went on a six week leave from July 23, 1990. The Chief Justice appointed a three-judge committee to find out whether there was any truth in the allegations and prepare a report. In his reply to the internal investigation, Justice Ramaswami alleged that a few Punjab High Court judges were conspiring against him. Even before the internal inquiry could be completed, Chief Justice Mukherjee died of a cardiac arrest in London on September 25, 1990. Ranganath Mishra was appointed as chief justice to succeed him. After his term ended, Mishra was nominated to the Rajya Sabha by the Congress party. The internal investigation committee submitted a report stating that there was no proof regarding the allegations against Justice Ramaswami, following which Justice Ramaswami started attending court. Another article saying the internal inquiry committee’s conclusions were erroneous appeared was published by the Lawyers Collective in January 1991..Justice Varma impeachment: Why the government’s reported plan to bypass the Judges (Inquiry) Act procedure should concern us.A resolution that was proposed to boycott Justice Ramaswami’s court since he had started attending court did not pass. Instead, it was said those advocates who did not wish to attend his court alone need not go. It was in this situation that we met all the opposition party leaders in Parliament and explained the charges against Justice Ramaswami and gathered support. We printed out the audit objections of the Accountant General and handed them over to all the members. Senior Advocate Sanjay Ghose recently tweeted on his ‘X’ handle: “Indira Jaising as editor of the Lawyers Collective had published the audit report on Justice Ramaswamy. For good measure stood in the corridors of the SC and hawked the magazine. The rest was history. Life comes full circle as her Leaflet becomes the first to publish the Inquiry Report on Justice Verma! Sad that it takes a lawyer to teach journalists what fearless journalism should be like!”Many leaders of the opposition political parties supported the move to bring forward a resolution to condemn Justice Ramaswami, because of which 108 members of Parliament proposed the resolution against Justice Ramaswami. The then Lok Sabha Speaker Rabi Ray, who took up the resolution for hearing, appointed a three-member committee of judges to investigate the charges. In March 1999, Indira Jaising wrote an essay in The Lawyers praising his efforts.Meanwhile, the V.P. Singh Government was brought down and a government headed by Chandra Shekhar took office at the Centre. Even that Government lost the support of the Congress within a few months and lost power and on March 12, 1991, Parliament was dissolved. It was decided to hold fresh Parliamentary elections. On May 21, 1991, Rajiv Gandhi was assassinated in Tamil Nadu while elections were underway. There was a sympathy wave in favour of Congress, because of which the Congress won a large number of seats in the South. Thanks to this P.V. Narasimha Rao was elected Prime Minister. It was argued on behalf of the Congress party that since the Ninth Lok Sabha had been dissolved and the Tenth Lok Sabha constituted, resolution brought forward in the previous Lok Sabha would become void.Opposing this, Supreme Court advocate Hardev Singh (CPIM) filed a case in the top Court on behalf of the Sub-Committee on Judicial Accountability, in which a three-Judge Bench ruled that the charges have to be investigated. It was concluded that even though the Parliament had been dissolved, the condemnation resolution was still valid (Sub-Committee On Judicial Accountability v. Union Of India, 1991 (3) SCC 65). .Even as a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court was hearing the case against Justice Ramaswami, a case filed by his father-in-law and former Judge K. Veeraswami was being heard by another Constitution Bench..Even as a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court was hearing the case against Justice Ramaswami, a case filed by his father-in-law and former Judge K. Veeraswami was being heard by another Constitution Bench. Justice Veeraswami would come to court daily when the case was being heard. He had previously filed a case in the Madras High Court in 1978 that judges were not covered by the Prevention of Corruption Act, which was dismissed in 1979. The appeal filed by him in the Supreme Court came up for final hearing after twelve years. Till then, the corruption case filed by the CBI against him was stayed. The case was finally dismissed and the Court ordered that judges would be covered by the Prevention of Corruption Act (K.Veeraswamy v. Union of India, 1991 (3) SCC 655). It was a coincidence that both father-in-law and son-in-law should get judgments against them at the same time.As per the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, even if a resolution has been proposed in Parliament, a three-judge committee has to be constituted to find out whether there is any basis for the charges. The committee should have a Supreme Court judge recommended by the Chief Justice of India, a Chief Justice of a High Court and a law expert recommended by the Lok Sabha Speaker. The head of that committee was the then Supreme Court judge Justice P.B. Sawant. A battery of prominent lawyers argued on behalf of Justice Ramaswami before the committee, in spite of which the three-member committee submitted a report on July 20, 1992 stating there was proof for the charges against Justice Ramaswami. Justice Ramaswami wrote a letter to the committee stating that before Parliament discusses the resolution, a copy of the committee’s report should be given to him.Justice Ramaswami filed a case in the Supreme Court in the name of his wife Sarojini Ramaswami since he did not get a copy of the report. The judges said they would hear the case only if Justice Ramaswami accepted that the verdict would be binding on him even though he had not filed the case. After his lawyer conveyed that he would abide by the verdict, the Constitution Bench heard the case and directed that a copy of the report be given to him (Sarojini Ramaswami v. Union of India, 1992 (4) SCC 506)..In-house committee found several mismatches between Justice Varma’s claims and evidence on ground.Meanwhile, M. Krishnaswami, who was a member of Parliament belonging to the Congress party from Tamil Nadu, filed another case in the Supreme Court. In that case, it was argued that the investigation into the charges against Justice Ramaswami should confine itself to only those charges mentioned in the resolution and that the Speaker should not allow discussion on other charges even if evidence had been recorded. Since Justice Ramaswami had not been included as a party in the case, the judges initially thought they would dismiss it, but then concluded the case after providing only one relief (M. Krishna Swamy v. Union of India, 1992 (4) SCC 605). The sum and substance of that was Parliament should only take into account the events mentioned by the judges’ committee.The three-judges committee headed by Justice Sawant submitted a report finding there was proof for the charges mentioned in the condemnation resolution. Justice Ramaswami’s supporters tried to use all possible weapons to thwart the resolution. As the Dravidar Kazhagam’s earlier ploy of calling it a plot by brahmins had failed, they now used a new strategy of calling it a conspiracy by North Indians to remove a South Indian judge from his post (as published in May 14, 1993 issue of Hindustan Times).Justice Ramaswami appointed advocate Kapil Sibal to argue on his behalf when the impeachment motion came up for debate in Parliament. He argued for nearly six hours. For the resolution to get passed, two-thirds of the members of Parliament should be present and voting and should be passed by a majority. Initially, the Congress members were told that they could vote as per their conscience, but later due to the machinations of Narasimha Rao, though they were present in the House, they did not register their attendance and sat through the proceedings. As many as 196 members voted for the resolution and no one voted against it. Still, the Speaker Shivraj Patil happened to announce that the resolution was not passed. The reason was that while two-thirds of the members were present, they were not recorded (though 205 Congress members were present, they did not mark their attendance) and the resolution was defeated. Even before the impeachment motion was taken up for discussion, Justice Ramaswami had announced through his personal assistant that he was not going to continue in his post whatever be the outcome of the vote. But when the resolution was not passed in Parliament, he started attending court once again. His term of office was to end on February 14, 1994, which meant that he still had nearly nine months left in office. However, the then Chief Justice Venkatachaliah did not allocate him any cases for hearing. In the last few months, Justice Ramaswami functioned from his chamber alone, collected his full salary and retire.After retirement, he was appointed as Chairman of a non-statutory Law Commission by the Jayalalithaa Government..After retirement, he was appointed as Chairman of a non-statutory Law Commission by the Jayalalithaa Government. Apart from being Jayalalithaa’s legal adviser, he even attempted to argue before an Election Officer that Jayalalithaa’s election application should not be rejected. He contested as an AIADMK candidate in the 1999 Lok Sabha elections from Sivakasi constituency and lost to Vaiko.Even though the decision to remove a judge was a political one, the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 gave the responsibility to a three-member committee of judges to find whether there was any basis for the charges that will have to be mentioned in the impeachment motion. Unless and until the three-member judges committee said there was proof for the charges, Parliament could not take up the resolution for voting. Thanks to this, the powers to remove a judge were still vested with the judiciary.Despite a three-member committee of judges finding that there was basis for nine of the 19 charges against Justice Ramaswami and that 196 members voted in favour of the impeachment motion, the resolution was defeated because a majority of the members did not come to the House.Even if a judge was found to have indulged in proved misbehaviour, a situation has been created that they cannot be removed from office because of the constitutionally guaranteed job security. It was thanks to the efforts of Indira Jaising and many others like me that we could take the move to impeach Justice Ramaswami to its final stage. Three seniors and well-known Supreme Court advocates Somnath Chatterjee, Ram Jethmalani and Shanti Bhushan have written about the efforts they made in the Justice Ramaswami impeachment process in their autobiographies. While Chatterjee had served as Speaker of the Lok Sabha, Jethmalani and Bhushan had served as law ministers. In Keeping the faith: Memoirs of Parliamentarian (2010), Chatterjee wrote “I consider the defeat of the motion for the impeachment of Justice Ramaswami as the defeat of our Parliament.”.In Ram Jethmalani: The authorised biography (2009), the journalist Nalini Gera wrote, “The incident affected Ram so deeply that he became a staunch advocate of mechanism to insulate the judiciary from politics. It was the manner in which the Ramaswamy case was politicized that made Ram such a strong votary of the National Judicial Commission when he became law minister in 1999, to the extent of antagonizing both the politicians and the judiciary.”..As Justice Yashwant Varma defies resignation calls, CJI Khanna recommends removal.In Courting Destiny: A Memoir (2008), Shanti Bhushan remarked “It is learnt that Justice Ramaswami protested against the refusal of the chief justice to assign any judicial cases to him. But Justice Venkatachalaiah stood firm in his resolve and from that day onwards, Justice Ramaswami did not set foot in court until the date of his retirement. He continued to draw his salary and remained on paper a judge of the Supreme Court, but without any judicial work till he retired on 14 February 1994. This was one salutary effect of the proceedings for his removal.”The failed impeachment motion against Justice V. Ramaswami is recapitulated after three decades only to show that even administrative lapse by a Chief Justice was found to be a proved misbehaviour in those days. In today’s time, when the notes bearing Gandhi’s pictures were burnt in the store house of a sitting judge, we are still discussing the modalities of removing him from his office even as the judge cools himself in his chambers without work, enjoying the salary and perks attached to it.

The silver maces and panic buttons: The impeachment story of Justice V. Ramaswami

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