Dear reader,
Could a government officer get into trouble simply for using the word ‘bhagwa’ (saffron) in a Facebook comment?
In Uttar Pradesh, a social media comment posted seven years ago by Rashmi Varun, Deputy Director of the Economics and Statistics Division in Saharanpur, turned into a terrifying ordeal. This is what Rashmi wrote on Facebook in February 2018:
At the time, there were hardly six or seven views and likes. But soon, a local paper picked it up, the district magistrate issued a show cause notice, and then passed an order holding her guilty under the U.P. Government Servant Conduct Rules. A chargesheet was filed after a formal warning, as the Inquiry Officer noted that the post was proof of an ‘indirect criticism of the government’. In December last year, UP’s Public Service Tribunal imposed a punishment on Varun. The case continues to trail her since.
Advocate Vaibhav Yadav reported this story for The Leaflet this weekend, and his conclusion is clear: the Tribunal has not only overstepped its own powers, but possibly violated the Conduct Rules, and what constitutes ‘government criticism’ under it.
Read the full story here:
Can the Tamil Nadu-Vijay saga repeat again?
Elections are, constitutionally speaking, fascinating times. Yesterday, as actor Joseph Vijay was sworn in as Tamil Nadu’s 22nd chief minister, it wasn’t without a constitutional conundrum on the limits of the Governor’s power, who had left Vijay hanging on the question of government formation for days on end. Finally, after CPI, CPI(M), VCK and Indian Union Muslim League joined hands alongside the five seats by Congress, Vijay had his letter of appointment by Saturday evening. But here is the bigger question: what is stopping such a development from recurring in the future?
Writing for The Leaflet, Rohan Mehta calls this overstepping of gubernatorial power ‘receipt constitutionalism’ – where despite prima facie proof of legislative majority, the governor becomes a checkpoint authority, exercising a power he has never been adorned with.
A ‘Satyagraha’ against a modern-day courtroom?
“I am left with the painful and inescapable impression that what I had urged as a lawful plea of apprehension was received and answered as a personal attack upon Your Ladyship,” wrote Delhi’s ex-chief minister Arvind Kejriwal last month in a letter to Justice Swarana Kanta Sharma, conveying his decision to boycott the Excise Policy proceedings before her court. But how do we translocate Gandhi’s model of civil disobedience against colonial institutions with the decision to boycott a judge in independent India? There is one way to think of it, academic Vijay K. Tiwari writes – to understand the Indian judiciary as being caught in a ‘judicial state of exception’.
“This crisis of the judiciary, or ‘judicial state of exception’ has become pervasive. The Schmittian framework of ‘decisionism’ or ‘pure theory of will’, as one scholar called it, has exacerbated this crisis for the Indian judiciary. The Judicial System needs introspection, in tandem with constitutional principles, so that recourse to non-cooperation and satyagraha can be avoided.”
Sabarimala goes into inquiries on Marriage & Excommunication
Our pointed coverage on the Sabarimala Reference proceedings in the Supreme Court provides among the most comprehensive, factually accurate hearing reports on the case. As the nine-judge Bench continues tomorrow, here is a look-back on the biggest questions that were floated last week. Is deemed conversion after marriage in the Parsi community a patriarchal residue? Does the excommunication practice in the Dawoodi Bohra community strike at the right to dignity?
Read the full coverage here:
‘I am a daughter of the Constitution’ – Book Launch
‘I may not have been one of the founding mothers of the Constitution, but I am one of its founding daughters,’ opens the blurb of our co-founder Indira Jaising’s new book. The book is a dive-in into a life in law that has shaped India’s legal landscape through crucial battles in the Court, from Mary Roy and the fight for equal inheritance to Olga Tellis, which recognized the right to livelihood for pavement dwellers. And if the Sabarimala hearings raise curiosities in your mind, this should be a must read to untangle the knotted questions on faith, justice and discrimination, through the life and mind of someone who has spent decades pondering these questions.
Pre-order, if you haven’t yet.
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