The Raja row taints the judiciary

The confusion over the complaint made by Justice Reghupathy about former Union telecom minister A Raja trying to influence his judgment during a murder case has been cleared up: in fact, there is no confusion at all.

Despite the claims of former chief justice of India, KG Balakrishnan, that he could not take any action because Reghupathy did not name the minister concerned, it now turns out that Reghupathy’s complaint was very specific.

Justice HL Gokhale who was chief justice of the Madras High Court at the time has now clarified that Balakrishnan did indeed receive Reghupathy’s letter with Raja’s name clearly mentioned.

There are number of unsavoury aspects to this matter as well as to the extraordinary leeway apparently granted to Raja while he was telecom minister.

The matter right now appears to extend beyond the 2G spectrum allocation and consequent allegations of corruption. Such was the power that Raja obviously felt that he had that he even approached a high court judge and lobbied for anticipatory bail for a murder accused. The 2G spectrum scam has already demonstrated how deep the rot runs within our system and now it appears to have tainted the judiciary as well.

After Balakrishnan’s attempts at obfuscation, he now needs to urgently clarify his position and seeming lack of action on this matter. Since two senior judges have made it clear that the former chief justice of the Supreme Court was in the know of events, his reluctance to take Raja on seems very unfortunate. Since an accused is innocent until proven guilty, Balakrishnan has this chance to explain himself.

The corruption of the executive and the legislature in India now seems endemic. Even the media looks worse off than it did before the 2G scam broke.

The judiciary had remained the last hope for those who seek redressal and Balakrishnan’s excuses — or lack of action — do not do it any good turns. There will now be suspicion about the role of some judges — if not the whole judiciary — in colluding with the rich and powerful.

The judiciary is a vital part of the cleaning up process and therefore it needs to come clean. The Supreme Court has refused to back down on its comments about the rot in the Allahabad high court. Now it needs to look further than that. As for Raja’s political supporters, they need to take a long hard look at the extent to which they are willing to destroy India’s most important structures for their narrow gains.