Kiren Rijiju
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YEAR-WISE DEVELOPMENTS
As in 2022- 23
Omkar Gokhale, May 28, 2023: The Indian Express
Kiren Rijiju was dropped as Union minister for law and justice and replaced by Arjun Ram Meghwal. Rijiju has been assigned charge of the Ministry of Earth Sciences. He took over as the law and justice minister on July 8, 2021.
However, over the last six months, Rijiju has been at the forefront of the tussle between the central government and the Supreme Court collegium over several issues.
In the battle that played out through the speeches and court proceedings in Mumbai since November last year, Rijiju took on the judiciary on several issues and received a response from the judiciary.
On November 4, stating that the collegium system of appointing judges is “opaque” and “not accountable”, Rijiju said he had to work with the present system until the government came up with an alternative mechanism. On December 14, Rijiju said in Parliament that if the Supreme Court “starts hearing bail applications…all frivolous PILs” it would add “a lot of extra burden on the court”.
In response, while delivering the Ashok H Desai memorial lecture, organised by the Bombay Bar Association in Mumbai, Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud on December 17 stated that citizens can have confidence in judges to be “guardians” of (their) liberties and reiterated that “no case is big or small for the courts, be it the district courts, high courts or the Supreme Court”.
CJI Chandrachud’s comment came a day after a bench of the apex court led by him remarked that “it is in the seemingly small and routine matters involving grievances of citizens that issues of the moment, both in jurisprudential and constitutional terms, emerge”.
On January 21, days after Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar questioned the basic structure doctrine, as laid down by the Supreme Court in the 1973 Kesavananda Bharati case, CJI D Y Chandrachud said in Mumbai that it was “like the north star,” providing invaluable guidance for the interpretation of the Constitution.
A month later, terming Rijiju’s remarks against the collegium system for appointing judges as a “diatribe”, former Supreme Court judge Rohinton Fali Nariman said in Mumbai that if the last bastion of the independent judiciary fell, the country would enter the “abyss of a new dark age”. Nariman, who was part of the Supreme Court collegium before retiring from the apex court in August 2021, also said that “sitting on names” recommended by the collegium was “deadly against democracy”.
Meanwhile, a lawyers’ organisation had filed a PIL petition in the Bombay High Court seeking action against Rijiju and Vice President Dhankhar over their public comments “showing lack of faith in the Constitution by attacking institutions, including the Supreme Court”.
However, a bench of Acting Chief Justice Sanjay V Gangapurwala dismissed the plea observing that “the credibility of Supreme Court of India is sky high and it cannot be eroded or impinged by the statements of individuals”.
The bench noted that the constitutional authorities cannot be removed by the court as suggested by the petitioner and that “fair criticism of the judgment is permissible”, adding that it was a “fundamental duty of every citizen to abide by the Constitution” and to “respect the majesty of law”.
On May 2, Rijiju, while addressing an event organised by the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa in Mumbai, said the Centre had not done anything to undermine the independence and authority of the judiciary ever since Narendra Modi became prime minister.
Asked whether the government was interfering in the functioning of the judiciary, Rijiju remarked on a lighter note that the question that should be asked was whether the judiciary was interfering in the government’s work.
On May 15, a Supreme Court bench led by Justice S K Kaul dismissed an appeal filed by the Bombay Lawyers Association against the high court order on its PIL against comments by Dhankhar and Rijiju.
The apex court upheld the Bombay high court’s view. “If any authority has made an inappropriate observation, then the shoulders of the Supreme Court are broad enough to deal with the same, is the correct view,” it said.
2023, May, and the events before
Apurva Vishwanath , Liz Mathew, December 13, 2022: The Indian Express
“We are on the same page… apas me ladke koi fayda nahi hai,” Union Minister for Law and Justice Kiren Rijiju said on November 25, speaking on the Supreme Court premises at an event marking Constitution Day. The next day, at another event, referring to the judiciary’s usual refrain on delay in appointment of judges, he said, “If the government is sitting on files, then don’t send the files”. Rijiju’s criticism drew a sharp response from the Supreme Court, reopening the debate on judicial appointments that was settled in 2015 with the top court striking down the 99th Constitution Amendment Act, which gave the government a foot in the door on appointing judges.
A three-time Lok Sabha MP from Arunachal Pradesh, 51-year old Rijiju took over as Union Minister for Law and Justice in July 2021. His promotion to a Cabinet rank from being a junior minister with Independent charge for Youth Affairs and Sports had come as a surprise for many in the government. A law graduate from Delhi University’s Campus Law Centre, Rijiju stepped into politics at an early age and barely practised law.
As an “outsider” to the legal fraternity, Rijiju was not an obvious choice to be tasked with walking the tightrope between the judiciary and the executive. After all, his predecessors in the ministry have all been illustrious lawyers, many of them the who’s who of the legal fraternity. From B R Ambedkar to Ashoke Sen, Ram Jethmalani, H R Bharadwaj, Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Many believe that Rijiju was chosen to the post not despite his familiarity with the legal profession but simply because of it. When the Modi government took over in 2014, among the first big projects it took up was the task of ‘reforming’ judicial appointments. The Constitution (Ninety-Ninth Amendment) Act, which established the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC), and the NJAC Act were passed by Parliament in 2014 to set up a commission for appointing judges, replacing the existing collegium system. However, the head-on collision that then law minister Arun Jaitley had with the judiciary soon fizzled out. The laws were repealed in 2015 after the Supreme Court, in a 4:1 majority, struck them down as “unconstitutional” and violative of the “basic structure of the Constitution”. This was followed by a temporary truce and what seems to be a change in tactics — bringing in an outsider to shake up the entrenched system.
Those in the BJP say it’s his lack of familiarity in the legal circles that allows Rijiju to “express his views freely”, without any apprehensions of “hurting his friends”. This is evident in Rijiju’s rather brusque comments on the collegium’s functioning — something his party colleagues back, even if those in legal circles disapprove.
“What’s wrong in what he said? He said that the collegium system is not mentioned in the Constitution but until there is an alternative system, we will follow it. That’s a fact. Whether he should have said it is a different question,” a senior BJP leader said.
Behind this persona of an outsider who speaks his mind is a man aware of the significance of his role. “He always says he will check and get back in two days,” a source said, referring to his calibrated approach while dealing with judges. “He is just someone who takes orders and implements them. He has not been able to take any decision on his own,” said a senior lawyer in the Supreme Court.
Born in Nakhu, a village in West Kameng district of Arunachal Pradesh, Rijiju’s father Rinchin Kharu was the first protem Speaker of the state Assembly. A keen follower of sports and politics, Rijiju, who also engaged in social work, graduated from Hansraj College and then studied law. At 33, he was elected to the Lok Sabha for the first time in 2004 on a BJP ticket, representing Arunachal West, and was noticed for his interventions in parliamentary debates. However, in the next general election, in 2009, after he was defeated by the Congress candidate by a thin margin, he announced that he was quitting to join the Congress. “I realised that Congress seems to be in a better position to serve Arunachal Pradesh, which is such an important and sensitive state,” he had said then.
But by 2014, his heart was back in the BJP, then riding a Modi wave. Contesting on a party ticket, he defeated the Congress candidate by an impressive margin and made his debut in the government as Minister of State for Home Affairs. Rijiju’s fluent Hindi — which he attributes to studying in then Union Territory of the North-East Frontier Agency — ensured that he was never out of place in the BJP.
“It is also a case of being at the right place at the right time. BJP was on an expansion mode, especially in the Northeast region, and was looking for young leaders,” says a BJP leader.
As minister, Rijiju easily built relationships with his Cabinet colleagues, with many citing his “hard work” and “youthful energy” — attributes that have earned him goodwill from both Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah. A fitness freak, Rijiju has often posted videos and photographs of his gym workouts.
“He is a role model for the youth in the Northeast. Kiran has thorough knowledge about the history of the Northeastern region and it helps him to grow as a youth icon there,” says Union Minister Rajeev Chandrashekhar.
He has never fought shy of owning his Northeast roots, even if it has occasionally landed him in a spot with his colleagues. In 2015, Rijiju criticised his colleague Mukhtar Abbas Naqvi for remarking that those who eat beef should go to Pakistan. Though he quickly backtracked and blamed the media for twisting his statement, he also called the “obsession” with Pakistan a “north Indian thing”. As MoS Home, his office had a wall-sized screen monitoring Chinese border movements.
Rijiju’s recent remarks on Jawaharlal Nehru’s role in the accession of Kashmir to India even triggered a public war of words between Congress leaders Jairam Ramesh and Karan Singh.
Despite the controversies, Rijiju’s supporters in the party maintain that it’s the absence of “godfathers” that has exposed him to attacks from his opponents, including in the legal fraternity.
At a time when the executive and the judiciary are walking a fine balance, what effect Rijiju and his propensity for shooting from the hip have on this relationship will be keenly watched.
