Supreme Court and the need for institutional coherence

Justice Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud demitted office as Chief Justice of India (CJI) on November 10, having served a relatively long tenure of two years. It is customary, and natural, to review the state of the institution on such occasions.

- Rishad Ahmed Chowdhury

While there are many lenses through which one might view the Supreme Court, the ultimate test of its success must be its legitimacy, its ability to command respect and compliance. By this standard, we must all be troubled by recent trends, now too frequent to be shrugged off as mere aberrations.

In one instance, a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court (HC) made sharply critical comments about an interim order of the Supreme Court. A five-judge bench of the Supreme Court was promptly constituted by then CJI Chandrachud, and the offending observations expunged. In another case, a judge of the Calcutta HC continued hearing a sensitive political matter after having been explicitly directed by the apex court to desist. In a third example, a Karnataka HC judge, while not addressing the Supreme Court directly, made remarks widely criticised as religiously insensitive and misogynistic.

In each of these cases, the Court has come down with a heavy hand, and self-consciously so. Five judge benches have been constituted to send a clear and unequivocal message. But in all of this, a deeper introspection is eschewed. Why are high court judges—constitutional functionaries themselves—so frequently thought to be disregarding the apex court's writ? Why do even final Supreme Court judgments so often seem like merely another page in the chapter, and not the definitive word they must ideally be understood to be?