Senior Supreme Court advocate and former Chief Justice ofthe Orissa High CourtS Muralidharon Tuesday said it is important to ask questions of whoever is in power to enforce accountability, and that the only way to ensureaccountability of those in power is to have a strong judiciary.
S Muralidhar, who was also a judge in the Delhi High Court, was speaking at the launch of a quiz book in Bengaluru titled ‘Ready for the Law Challenge’, authored by his former intern Raghav Chakravarthy. He was on the panel discussing the topic “Curiosity, Democracy and Public Life”.
“As a lawyer and, of course, later as a judge, you begin to realise the only way you can really influence accountability of those in power is to have a strong judiciary. A judiciary that lends its hand to people wanting answers from the government. And the more and more judges realise that they are meant to do this very primary fundamental duty as a constitutional court, we’ll have a better country,” Muralidhar added during the conversation.
The idea for the book took shape at the Delhi High Court in 2011, when Chakravarthy was interning with Justice S. Muralidhar. During a conversation, he mentioned that he was heading to Sweden after winning a national quiz organised by the Swedish Embassy. Justice Muralidhar then suggested that he create a question bank and share it with lawyers across the country.
S Muralidhar was speaking at the launch of a quiz book in Bengaluru titled ‘Ready for the Law Challenge’, authored by his former intern Raghav Chakravarthy. He was on the panel discussing the topic “Curiosity, Democracy and Public Life”.
On RTI movement
The former judge also highlighted the power of the RTI movement when he said, “The RTI movement followed with the RTI Act. It came through small protests of this nature, in which they asked questions of the local administration. It’s so important to ask questions of whoever is in power to enforce accountability. Democracy in the court, of course, as a judge, as a lawyer, you keep filing petitions where you don’t get responses from the government otherwise. The government is forced to come and respond to the court.”
Responding to the question on curiosity and its role in his life, S Muralidhar said, “I think curiosity plays a role in democracy; I think the best example to give here. Just to see the power of the people is the MK case movement in Rajasthan.”
He highlighted how people were asking a simple question of their own panchayats. “Money is allocated for projects in this area; what’s happened to that money? Show us the accounts; that’s how the entire movement started, and it’s one of the most powerful tools,” he added.
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On Safai Karmachari Andolan being mentioned, he said that the PIL started in 2003, three years before he became a judge; with that, he emphasised, “what we could not have got through RTI applications, and otherwise, we were able to get responses from states across the country.”
Continuing the conversation of RTI, he said that those responses were denials that there is any manual scavenging happening in the state. “We had to then produce video clips.” He continued, “We had to produce personal testimonies to make them accept that it was happening, and it was a long struggle, so that was another big, big step forward in trying to eradicate the practice; it’s not been entirely successful, but that’s a fight that will go on.”
As a lawyer, and of course later as a judge, you begin to realise that the only way you can really enforce accountability of those in power is a strong judiciary, he said.
‘Law an ocean’
Elaborating on the influence of law and legal development, Muralidhar said that every day something happens in connection with the law.
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“You open the newspaper, there are so many news items about what’s happening in the court or what’s happening in society, which can become a potential case. So there’s a lot of interest in law. Lawyers, by their very training, get to realise very soon that all the learning happens in court,” he said.
However, the former judge said, it is not possible to get exposed to all branches of the law.
“It’s like an ocean. Like, so many disciplines. It’s a vast ocean. So you may join a law office where your senior colleague does a certain kind of case, and you may not have any exposure to other kinds of cases at all. You can sit in the court, you can watch other lawyers perform, but it’s only so much of a learning… Kerala has attempted it, like a law academy, that is on-the-job learning. So there are so many developments in the law at a very rapid pace that you can’t keep up with it.”
Muralidhar, therefore, underscored the need for an avenue where one is not taxed for and learns to enjoy besides gaining knowledge. “And quizzes somehow break down hierarchies. The brightest mind could be the youngest,” he noted.
