Politicisation of lawyers — careful!

The Congress legal forum adopted a resolution last month to create a database of lawyers who subscribe to the party’s thinking and who will serve its purpose. But there’s nothing new in this plan.

The party’s former youth wing chief, the late Sanjay Gandhi, had also used the services of such lawyers to propagate the abhorrent Emergency and the laudable free legal aid scheme.
In recent times, Gujarat CM Narendra Modi delegated the 2002 carnage cases to loyal lawyers who secured acquittal of many accused. Later, the Supreme Court directed the government to appoint meritorious, non-political lawyers.

In law and in principle, every lawyer is an “officer of the court”. S/he should owe allegiance to the court and open its eyes to uncontaminated facts. Defending a client is one thing, that’s a lawyer’s duty, misusing the process of justice to serve a client’s interest is another.

A former CJI once told this reporter if lawyers assisted courts in initial processes, such as serving notices on defendants or witnesses, and desisted from seeking adjournments, the problem of backlog of cases could be solved to an extent.
Being part of a party isn’t an offence. Nor is it an offence to propagate its plan. But working against the interest of the hard-pressed judiciary wouldn’t be fair.

It’s expected that the new cadre of loyal lawyers that the Congress plans to raise would be taught to serve the justice system, not the government.

In 2006, PMO asked law commission chairman M Jagannadha Rao to examine the quality of prosecutors. There is a problem of accountability in contractual public prosecutors appointed on political recommendations, it said.

To insulate the justice system from the ill-effects of politically motivated prosecutors, their selection must be constitutionally acceptable and there should be no discrimination.

To preclude arbitrariness, the law commission proposed a higher constitutional principle to compel a fair and transparent procedure of appointment. Once such a procedure is introduced by parliament, states doing away with it will attract article 14 (right against discrimination on the basis of caste, religion, etc).