It was the former Supreme Court judge who red-flagged the apex court’s indifference to the plight of millions of migrant workers, who walked, cycled and hung on to trucks all the way to their villages without food, water or shelter.

Lokur wrote in an opinion piece that the Supreme Court deserved an ‘F’ grade for its handling of the migrants issue and the lack of sympathy for their sufferings when it accepted the claims made by the government that ‘there is no person walking on the road to reach his or her village and anyone outside is being taken to a shelter’.

It was only after more people, including other jurists and legal luminaries, joined the clamour that the Supreme Court on May 26 took suo motu cognizance of the miseries of migrant labourers and ordered that the state and central governments must provide free transportation and care for the workers, many of who died in their long march, easily the biggest people’s movement since Partition.

A three-member bench which heard a petition about the miseries of the migrant labour had said ‘it was not possible for the court to monitor who is walking and who is not walking’. Further, when the petitioner raised cited the incident in which 16 migrants were run over by a goods train while they were sleeping on the railway tracks on May 8, the bench wondered ‘how can anybody stop this when they sleep on railway tracks?

The indifference led to an outrage in public opinion, which saw former Supreme Court judge Gopala Gowda and former Delhi High Court Chief Justice AP Shah express dismay at the way in which the apex court responded to the grave humanitarian crisis. Justice Shah, who is also a former chairman of the Law Commission, said he was ‘thoroughly disappointed’ with the Supreme Court response.

Lokur’s outburst promptly invited a campaign against him, citing his own record with regard to public interest litigations relating to causes similar to that of the migrant labourers. It has been described as part of a conspiracy to bring disrepute to the judiciary. These quarters argue that ever since his retirement Justice Lokur has been throwing his weight behind activists who are out to discredit the highest court of the land.

In fact, the Bar Council of India alleged that some former judges and senior advocates were in a conspiracy to weaken and browbeat the Supreme Court through a ‘sustained and synchronised attack’ on the institution.

“We have heard Justice Lokur giving sermons that no one from the Bench and Bar should ever indulge in an act that would shake the faith of the public in judiciary. Now, he himself becoming part of these misguided group of people is a mind-boggling departure by him from his own much-hyped principles,” BCI chairman Manan Kumar Mishra said in a statement.

Maybe Justice Lokur had been a stickler of the same ‘principles’ that the Supreme Court bench cited in not considering the cause of the migrant labourers sympathetically, but that does not take away the significance of what he has said in the present instance. Better late than never.

This is not the only instance of ‘activism’ by Lokur. He was part of the foursome led by Justice Chelameswar when they held a ‘call of national duty’ press conference where the judges had raised an alarm against the practices followed by the then Chief Justice Dipak Misra to use his master of the roster privileges to allocate sensitive cases to ‘preferred benches’. The presser has been described as a milestone in the history of Indian judiciary.

Retired judge Kurian Joseph, who along with Lokur and former Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, comprised the ‘rebel’ judges, has expressed similar sentiments about the Supreme Court’s approach. Justice Joseph has gone on record saying that the court’s business is not just to sit in judgment over what the government does, but also to point out what the government has not done.

Kurian Joseph was one of the first to slam Ranjan Gogoi’s nomination to Rajya, indicating that he has not carried his press conference loyalties to beyond milestone event. This also proves that his support to Lokur’s stand is not prejudiced by his association with the judicial ‘rebellion’. That is a strong endorsement of what Lokur has said on the migrant labour issue.
(IPA Service)