Bhushan fined Re 1

By imposing a fine of merely Re 1 on activist-lawyer Prashant Bhushan for contempt of court, the Supreme Court has shown magnanimity behoving its dignity as an institution charged with the duty to dispense justice. Bhushan’s announcement that he would respectfully pay the fine has ended the possibility of the lawyer being sent to jail for three months and getting debarred from practising before the Supreme Court for three years. But he intends to seek review of the verdict. While the controversy appears to have ended for now, the larger issue of citizens’ right to subject the judiciary to scrutiny and criticism in a democracy remains unaddressed.

From the outset, the court wanted to give quietus to the controversy by attempting to persuade the lawyer to tender an apology and ‘save the grace of the institution as well as the individual’, even as Bhushan maintained that an insincere apology would amount to ‘contempt of my conscience and of an institution that I hold in highest esteem.’ But the fact remains that the offence of ‘scandalising’ the judiciary is vague and incapable of being qualified as a criminal law provision. Section 2(c)(i) of the Contempt of Courts Act doesn’t define the expression in question.

Right to free speech and right to dissent are highly valued rights essential to make a democracy survive and thrive. That’s why several countries, including the UK, have done away with this archaic provision of the contempt law. While one would agree with the court that citizens’ faith in the institution of justice is the foundation for the rule of law essential for the functioning of a democratic society, the problem is not just about the definition. It’s also about violation of principles of natural justice as judges being the aggrieved parties — either as individuals or as members of the institution — hear the matter themselves and there is no provision for appeal in case it’s contempt of the Supreme Court. One expects the apex court to have a relook at the problem areas of the contempt law when it takes up the review petition to be filed by Bhushan.