The Supreme Court on Monday answered a plea to direct the Union government to invoke emergency powers and “protect” the State of West Bengal from violence with a question on whether such a measure would amount to a judicial incursion into the domains of the Executive and Legislature.
Gavai, who has been recommended to be appointed as the next Chief Justice of India, obliquely referred to criticism about the judiciary intruding on government and parliamentary terrains following an April 8 judgment in the Tamil Nadu Governor case. Jain to hear his application to invoke Article 355 of the Constitution. He pleaded for an urgent hearing of his plea on April 22.
Justice B.R. The court, in its verdict, had issued timelines to the President and Governors for clearing Bills. “You want us to issue a writ of mandamus to the Union government to deploy paramilitary forces… Will it not be interfering with the Legislative and Executive domains? As it is, we are being accused of interfering with Parliamentary and Executive functions,” Justice Gavai remarked to advocate Vishnu Shankar Jain. The judge’s remark from the Bench was in response to a plea by Mr. Meanwhile, another Bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Surya Kant saw a petitioner-advocate, Shashant Shekhar Jha, withdraw his petition seeking the setting up of a Special Investigation Team and a court-monitored probe into the violence in West Bengal over the new waqf law amendments.
Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankar had criticised the judiciary for acting like a “super-Parliament”. Article 355 mandates it the “duty of the Union to protect every State against external aggression and internal disturbance and to ensure that the government of every State is carried on in accordance with the provisions of this Constitution”.
One of the pleas sought a direction to the State government to file a report in the apex court on steps taken to contain the violence and protect public property and lives. The Calcutta High Court had recently ordered the deployment of Central forces in Murshidabad district. Both petitioners had referred to the violence in the Bhangar area of West Bengal’s South 24 Parganas district on April 14. At least three people were killed and hundreds rendered homeless in communal violence in parts of Murshidabad, mainly Suti, Samserganj, Dhulian and Jangipur, on April 11 and 12 during the protests against the waqf law amendments.
