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Justice GR Swaminathan: Congress General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi Vadra, Samajwadi Party President Akhilesh Yadav, DMK leader TR Baalu and many other leaders met Om Birla and gave notice against Justice GR Swaminathan. This notice has been signed by 107 opposition MPs.
New Delhi. Fifty-six former judges on Friday issued a statement condemning the DMK’s attempt to remove Madras High Court judge GR Swaminathan, calling it a ‘brazen attempt to intimidate judges’. On December 1, Justice Swaminathan ruled that the Arulmighu Subramanya Swamy temple is duty-bound to light lamps at the Deepathoon, in addition to the customary lighting of lamps near the Uchi Pillaiyar Mandapam. The single judge bench said that doing so would not violate the rights of the nearby Dargah or the Muslim community.
This order sparked controversy and on December 9, several opposition MPs led by DMK submitted a notice to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to bring a motion to remove the judge. The statement said, “This is a brazen attempt to intimidate judges who do not conform to the ideological and political expectations of a particular section of the society. If such an attempt is allowed to continue, it will destroy the very roots of our democracy and the independence of the judiciary.”
It says that even if the reasons given by the signatory MPs are accepted literally, they are insufficient to warrant resorting to the rare, extraordinary and serious constitutional remedy of removal from office. The signatories to the statement include two former judges of the Supreme Court, five former chief justices of various high courts and 49 retired judges.
Congress, DMK, Samajwadi Party and several other opposition parties had on December 9 submitted a notice to Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla proposing the removal of Justice Swaminathan, who passed the order in the case related to ‘Kartigai Deepam’ at a temple located near a dargah in Tamil Nadu. This notice has been signed by 107 opposition MPs.
“The conduct of Justice G.R. Swaminathan raises serious questions regarding the impartiality, transparency and secular functioning of the judiciary. It appears that senior advocate M. Sricharan Ranganathan, associated with the case, was given undue favor and also favored advocates of a particular community,” the opposition parties said in the notice. The notice also claims that the cases were decided on the basis of a particular political ideology and against the secular principles of the Indian Constitution.
