New Delhi, Jan 15 (IANS) Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan had a busy first day in office Monday, presiding over 52 cases including one involving insult to a Dalit politician.
A judge for over three decades, Balakrishnan is the first to rise to the pinnacle of India's judiciary from among the socially oppressed Dalits, overcoming tremendous odds since his humble beginnings in a Kerala village.
On Monday, as he entered Court Room 1, which he will occupy as the country's 37th chief justice until May 2010, he marked a new chapter in the history of the apex court.
By sheer coincidence, Balakrishnan found himself adjudicating a 2004 petition related to the age-old bias and prejudice against low-caste people in India.
The matter cropped up in the form of a plea by Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader Barkhuram Verma, a Dalit, seeking prosecution of Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mulayam Singh Yadav and other senior Samajwadi Party (SP) leaders for making insulting, casteist remarks.
The SP leaders allegedly had made the remarks against BSP president Mayawati and Verma, a former Uttar Pradesh minister, when they were confined in a Lucknow guesthouse in 1995 amid political turmoil in the state.
Following an alleged assault on them, the BSP leaders had lodged criminal cases against SP activists, along with a complaint accusing them of making casteist remarks.
The BSP had sought prosecution of the SP leaders under various sections of the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act.
After the trial court and later the Allahabad High Court quashed the charges, Verma moved the Supreme Court, which issued notice to Mulayam Singh Yadav and other SP leaders on May 5, 2004.
As the case was taken up by the bench headed by the chief justice, Uttar Pradesh government counsel Rakesh Dwiwedi argued that the trial court had quashed the charges in a well-considered verdict and the matter needed to be dismissed summarily.
The chef justice, however, was not convinced. In his soft but firm voice, he ordered further hearing in the case and directed that it be listed in the third week of April.
Among the 52 cases that the new chief justice adjudicated along with judges D.K. Jain and H.S. Bedi on the bench, two of particular public interest included the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) probe into charges of corruption in defence deals and hearing of a plea seeking a ban on publication of exit and opinion polls till the actual voting is over in elections.
While monitoring the CBI probe into various cases arising out of the Tehelka news portal expose of alleged corruption in defence deals, the bench ticked off the investigative agency for tardy progress.
What upset the bench was that the agency had not begun even the preliminary enquiry into many of the 40 matters related to defence deals referred to it.
When Additional Solicitor General Gopal Subramaniam told the court that the agency would submit a status report on the probe into the various cases, Justice Jain curtly remarked: "We do not want status report; we want the CBI's action taken report."