The Hindu : National : An eventful year for Supreme Court

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Jan 02, 2005

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National

An eventful year for Supreme Court

By J. Venkatesan

NEW DELHI, JAN. 1. The year 2004 has been an eventful one both for the Chief Justice of India, R.C. Lahoti and the Supreme Court as a number of orders were passed in several important cases placing a check on the Executive.

The former Chief Justice, V.N. Khare, held office till May. During his tenure, the apex court declined to modify an order shifting the Rs. 66 crore disproportionate assets case against the Tamil Nadu Chief Minister, Jayalalithaa, and four others from a Chennai special court to a special court in Bangalore. In April, Ms. Jayalalithaa's review petition against this order was also dismissed.

Ten Sports, the Dubai-based sports channel which had obtained the telecast rights for cricket matches played by India, claimed that Doordarshan had not participated in the bid and so was not entitled to beam its signals for the India-Pakistan cricket match played in Pakistan. But the court said the local channel had a paramount duty to telecast the matches in the public interest. On the eve of the general elections, the court stayed the telecast of slanderous and surrogate advertisements by political parties. But the court declined to stay the telecast or publication of opinion/exit polls.

The transfer and retrial of the "Best Bakery case" from a court in Vadodara in Gujarat to a Mumbai special court was intended to uphold the rule of law and was a new development in the annals of criminal jurisprudence. The court had relied on the public interest petitions filed by the National Human Rights Commission and Zahira Sheikh, the key witness in the case, to order a re-trial. But in November when Zahira retracted her earlier statement, the court issued a notice to her treating it as contempt and the matter is still pending.

When Justice R.C. Lahoti took over as the Chief Justice of India in June he made it clear that his top priority would be to put an end to corruption in the judiciary. He was of the view that judicial activism was not new in India as the judiciary intervened only when the executive failed to perform its duties.

The court granted relief to the MDMK leader, Vaiko, who was detained under POTA for 19 months. It stayed the trial in the POTA special court in Chennai after the Review Committee cleared him of all charges.

The court rapped the Karnataka Government for seeking to reconstitute the Cauvery tribunal set up in 1990. As a result, the State agreed to abide by the decision of the tribunal. The court referred to a seven-judge Bench the petition filed by The Hindu questioning the privileges enjoyed by the Legislative Assembly when dealing with press freedom. On another petition filed by The Hindu, the court decided to lay down a law regarding criminal defamation.

The biggest challenge before the court was whether the Board of Control for Cricket in India could act unilaterally in the award of contracts for telecast of matches. Zee television networks moved the court and orders were reserved on this important question. Again, the BCCI elections were challenged and the appointment of Jagmohan Dalmiya as the patron-in-chief was stayed and his continuance would depend on the court verdict.

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