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Lok Sabha Speaker Somnath Chatterjee’s statement that the judiciary and the legislatures exist in mutual respect is unexceptionable. Each has its own area of activity marked out in the Constitution for harmonious co-existence. Trust and confidence in each other is the prime condition of this co-existence. All this is so.
What has made Chatterjee to call a meeting of all speakers of state assemblies is the order of the Supreme Court in the mess created by the political class in Jharkhand with the connivance of the governor who ought to observe developments with genuine impartiality and understanding.
When the governor failed to carry out his functions, as enjoined under the Constitution, all the wrong decisions were taken by parties. The Lok Sabha Speaker came into the picture when he addressed an all-party meeting in the Central Hall of Parliament and suggested a Presidential reference to the Supreme Court on the powers of the highest court in the country to intervene in a situation like the one created by the political parties in Jharkhand.
While the UPA, led by the Congress, made the right noises in the beginning about such a reference (while NDA, led by BJP, was not very enthusiastic), the Speaker re-read the situation and became not so keen about such a reference. Hence he resorted to calling a meeting of all assembly speakers (eleven of them did not attend the meeting).
From the tone and temper of the proceedings, it was clear that nobody wanted to take a rigid stand vis-a-vis the Supreme Court. Everybody stressed the need for mutual respect. The Lok Sabha Speaker’s point whether the court would have hauled up the pro-tem speaker and MLAs becomes somewhat rhetorical in view of the fact that the entire mess was created by political parties which was later cleaned up through the intervention of the Prime Minister.
Which means that the Speaker concedes that chaos prevailed in Jharkhand owing to the mistakes committed by the governor and two political parties.
In the situation a citizen had approached the apex court for redressal of his grievance. Should the court hear his petition or not? That the Prime Minister failed to remedy the worsening situation in the beginning shows that the legislature, abetted by the governor, would have persisted in its folly, if the Supreme Court had not intervened.
If the legislature plays its role,
as laid down in the Constitution, there is no question of the court playing
any role. Both are equally important organs of the state. But when one
of them knowingly and deliberately errs, the court is the only institution
that can save the citizen from the rapacious aggrandisement of the political
class. There is no question of transgression.
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