If any more proof of the utter lawlessness practiced by the India’s puppet government in Punjab was required, it is available in ample measure. The Punjab high court has ample measure. The Punjab high court has convicted states secretary A. S. Chatha for one months imprisonment and a fine of R.s 1000, The conviction is due to Chathas defiance of the court’s order regarding promotion of government clerks, Malook Singh and 74 others, Chatha’s failure to comply with the court order is in itself not a big issue, The chief secretary may not have any animosity towards Malook Singh and his friends nor could he perhaps have any special relationship with the beneficiaries of the three-year-long delay in implementing the courts order, [tis also possible that the final word on the conviction has not been said and that superior courts may review the order and finally let off Chatha. It is, however, worth nothing that such a senior officer of a state government in India has been punished so severely. The case has several institutional aspects which deserve a closer study.
This case has served to expose the chasm that exists between the executive and the courts. The fact is that India is not much of a democracy. Elections, of course, do take place. But, as noted by former Prime Minister V. P. Singh, elections took place even in Hitler’s Germany. Normally in a democracy different organs of state serve mutually as checks and balances. But the Punjab high court’s order does not fall in this category. In today’s India the executive docs not area fig for the judiciary. The judges are fed up with the executive. Orders of judges are thrown into waste paper baskets by the executive. This applies with great force the police wing of the executive in particular. The police is law unto itself. It is acting as prosecutor, trial ~ and appellate courts all at the same time. In Punjab, not Only orders of the courts have been flouted but officers of the courts sent by the judges to raid police posts in pursuance of habeas corpse petitions have been fired at, in several cases. The Indian government has armed the forces with sweeping powers through a series of draconian laws. The governments minority commission itself now feels that the notorious T.A.D.A. is aimed at Muslims and Sikhs in particular. The government’s human rights commission, which is toothless body, plan is Challenge the “TAD. A in the Supreme Court. In Punjab, the executives lawlessness has exceeded all limits. The high court has tried to assert its authority in the broader context. The order against Chatha should not be seen in isolation, But the courts in India have yet to muster courage to fix up officers like K-P.S. Gill. The Chatha conviction is symbolic of the judicial repudiation of the lawless ways of the Beant Singh government in Punjab; there are people more contemptuous of the courts and the rule of the law than Chatha.
However, it has to be admitted that any amount of conviction of a Chatha or a Gill cannot remedy the system in India and in Punjab. V. P. Singh has rightly observed that the balance of power India has tilted in favor of the executive and against the Parliament. The true import of the executive’s supremacy in Indian context is that the effective power now rests with a clique comprising the Brahman-dominated army, the police and the secret services. This elique indulges in as laughter of Sikhs, Muslims and Christians in Punjab, Kashmir and India’s north-east. These activities are outside the pale of judicial scrutiny, | Leaders of public opinion in the western countries should examine the Indian reality more closely and not superficially. All is not will with India and its so-called democracy. The Chatha conviction is merely the tip of a dubious iceberg.
Article extracted from this publication >> August 19, 1994
