oppn parties Governments Must Not Ignore Court Orders

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  • Sikh extremists attacked a cinema hall in London that was playing Kangana Ranaut's controversial film 'Emergency'
  • A Delhi court directed the investigating agencies to senstize officers to collect nail clippings, fingernail scrappings or finger swab in order to get DNA profile as direct evidence of sexual attack is often not present and might result in an offender going scot free
  • Uniform Civil Code rules cleared by state cabinet, likely to be implemented in the next 10 days
  • Supreme Court reiterates that there is no point in arresting the accused after the chargesheet has been filed and the investigation is complete
  • Kolkata court sentences Sanjoy Roy, the sole accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case, to life term. West Bengal government and CBI to appeal in HC for the death penalty
  • Supreme Court stays criminal defamation case against Rahul Gandhi for his remarks against home minister Amit Shah in Jharkhand during the AICC plenary session
  • Government reviews import basket to align it with the policies of the Trump administration
  • NCLT orders liquidation of GoAir airlines
  • Archery - Indian archers bagged 2 silver in Nimes Archery tournament in France
  • Stocks make impressive gain on Monday - Sensex adds 454 points to 77073 and Nifty 141 points to 23344
  • D Gukesh draws with Fabiano Caruana in the Tata Steel chess tournament in the Netherlands
  • Women's U-19 T20 WC - In a stunning game, debutants Nigeria beat New Zealand by 2 runs
  • Rohit Sharma to play under Ajinkye Rahane in Mumbai's Ranji match against J&K
  • Virat Kohli to play in Delhi's last group Ranji trophy match against Saurashtra. This will be his first Ranji match in 12 years
  • The toll in the Rajouri mystery illness case rose to 17 even as the Centre sent a team to study the situation
Calling the case not 'rarest of rare', a court in Kolkata sentenced Sanjay Roy, the only accused in the R G Kar rape-murder case to life in prison until death
oppn parties
Governments Must Not Ignore Court Orders

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2021-12-27 10:08:23

About the Author

Sunil Garodia Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator.

CJI NV Ramana's lament that the executive has a tendency to ignore court orders and it is a cause for worry is timely. Governments, both at the Centre and the states, are the biggest litigants in India courts. They, through their various departments or bodies, sue people or are sued in turn by citizens aggrieved by any action or order of such departments and bodies. A majority of the huge backlog of cases in Indian courts either have the government as the plaintiff or the respondent. A major percentage of the time of all courts is spent in deciding these cases. If governments choose to ignore the orders, then the courts are entitled to think that they wasted their time. More importantly, it undermines the importance of the judiciary. It also results in justice not being delivered.

Most governments ignore court orders when it goes against them. If the order is favourable, government departments move with alacrity to take action. But when things are not in their favour, most departments choose to sit on court orders as if nothing happened. This, as the CJI said, is obviously worrying.

If court orders are not followed by the government, why file cases? It is obvious that not all cases will be decided in the government's favour. There are points of law which the government thinks are in its favour but which the court might not agree to. Hence, governments will have to respect the decision of the court and must act upon the orders once all legal avenues are exhausted.

We have heard a lot about the separate domains of the pillars of democracy. We have also heard about judicial overreach as well as executive overreach. But if the executive makes laws which are passed by the legislature, it must learn to respect the orders of the courts which interpret these laws as they were enacted by the legislature. Otherwise, the entire system of making laws and having courts to interpret them will be rendered pointless.