Currently, Justice PB Bajanthri, a Patna High Court judge, is being ruthlessly roasted by the social media for being evidently illogical and egoistic while rebuking Anand Kishore, a senior IAS-cadre bureaucrat of Bihar on a trivial dress code issue. Kishore had not buttoned up the collar portion of his very cool and sober shirt, which only lawyers are expected to do while facing a judge. Besides, there is no specific dress code for any non-uniformed civil servant in any known rulebook, the Principal Secretary for Housing and Urban Development in white shirt and trousers told the judge respectfully. But the judge, hell bent on offending the officer, kept interrupting only to humiliate him further by seeking to know if they had not taught him any dress code at the Mussorie administrative academy. He asked if the latter had imagined being in a movie theatre.
Justice Bajanthri seemed to be deriving a great deal of sadistic pleasure by harping on the same thing for precious two and a half minutes, across which two matters are sometimes heard quickly at the Supreme Court.
A two-minute video clip of the judge-bureaucrat exchange of words has been circulating on Twitter. Most viewers with thinking skills say Justice Bajanthri wasted the court’s precious time that could have been used to actually discuss the issue at hand. The most disgusting thing was that he never listened to the gentle and decently-dressed officer. So, the people’s verdict on the judge’s act is that the stupidly real-life courtroom drama delayed justice delivery.
As reported by the media in March 2022, India has 4.70 crore pending cases with 70,514 in the Supreme Court and 58,94,060 in 25 High Courts. No wonder, India has so many cases still lying unresolved partly because a few judges imagine they are lords from heaven and can get away with any wrong they commit.
Justice Bajanthri’s admonishing of a highly-civilised officer for showing up in perfectly formal attire is something one expects of an irate school principal during the morning assembly session with unruly students running around here and there noisily or improper dress. A judge does not have that liberty at all.
Justice Bajanthri from Karnataka will retire in 2023 if not elevated to the Supreme Court. His property list says he has a residential bungalow and an apartment in the city of Bengaluru and a piece of homestead land in Ramnagar, 50 km away from the capital city. He has a Honda Activa scooter only for city travel. Neither he nor anyone in the family does own a four-wheeler which is a strange fact. Perhaps, Justice Bajanthri is so ruthlessly honest that he doesn’t tolerate slightest of deviation in behaviour and conduct displayed by anyone in his court.
All the same, he tried to act big and offended a gentleman bureaucrat for no reason or rhyme in public only to show he is lord in human form, and in result is getting lashes from all and sundry in the social media after the court proceeding video went viral on the twitter. Honesty and integrity are immeasurable virtues, but arrogance and ego far outweigh the two attributes to reduce one to a mean human creature. The dress code issue should not have been so severely taken up by him. He indeed wasted precious court time for which he has to slap a fine on himself to convince the masses that he is truly above board.
It is also true that people have not liked the judiciary arbitrarily hijacking the right to frame rules for choosing superior court judges by what’s called the ‘collegium method’. Judges choosing judges has not gone too well with the people. Though it is also true the political executive is by and large suspect on integrity and conduct fronts, it is still not proper to trash established democratic processes of a state only because the judiciary has been empowered to give the last word. It is heard and proven in several cases that guys who could not become clerks in government departments for not being able to pass ordinary competitive exams have become judges of High Courts because of pushes and pulls from collegium members. Not that all of them have proven to be bad judges but that their entry into the portals of the constitutional courts has been through doors made of nepotistic stuff. Such judges keep eating up public money without delivering justice. It is known that some of these fortunate self-styled Lords have come and gone without giving verdicts. Only interim orders of relief have flown from their pens.
On February 23, 2021, a Bench headed by the CJI Justice Bobde objected to being addressed as ‘Your Honour’ because he wanted to be treated as Lord. “When you call us Your Honour, you either have the Supreme Court of United States or the ordinary Magistrate in mind. We are neither,” he had told a student petitioner who apologised and addressed him ‘My Lord’. This was a horrifying paradox because the same judge had expressed great displeasure over the colonial, slavish address in 2014.
A heated war of words between the judge and the lawyer is fine and natural, which is good fodder for social commentary. But for those frantically waiting for justice, it’s a mockery of the judicial system. Much time is lost in ego battles between judges and lawyers. So, if a judge is trying to bully a non-judiciary official just to satisfy ego, it is nothing but gross miscarriage of justice. Delay in delivery of anything is denial.
Though the Indian judiciary is one of the best in the world today, a handful of blacksheep cause a lot of public hurt. Chief Justice Gogoi gifted the nation the Ayodhya verdict to please the saffron brigade so immensely as to be offered a Rajya Sabha seat immediately after retiring from office. He too was insane in grabbing the gift without considering the public consequences. Many Indians screamed ‘Shame’ to no effect. Justice Gogoi, who had the authority to give jolts to the Prime Minister on legal issues, chose merrily to sit among crooks with serious criminal cases ofcorruption and tax evasion.
Lastly, the Supreme Court has passed instructions to all High Courts never to summon senior government bureaucrats for personal appearance unless the matter is extremely serious and the concerned official is habitually defiant and chronically noncompliant. The apex court’s advisory says the Advocate General or his deputies or the principal standing counsels first be summoned to make clear the status and urged to have orders complied with rather than directing extremely busy officials to come and convince the court on conduct. Justice Bajanthri has ignored that advisory
