From the Editor in Chief


	August 07, 2000

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The Vatican of the legal world in India is squabbling in full public view. The highest legal authority in the land, Chief Justice of India A.S. Anand, first shot off a criticism that the Government was speaking in many voices about the Srikrishna Commission report. The highest legal guardian of the Government, Law Minister Ram Jethmalani, interpreted this as a direct, personal attack on him. He in turn heaped scorn and invective on the highest legal counsel of the Government, Attorney-General Soli Sorabjee, and accused him of orchestrating this attack. Sorabjee only added to the melee by accusing Jethmalani of impropriety. The prime minister, obviously perceiving this to be a major blunder on part of his mercurial law minister, sacked him, with the hope of avoiding any further confrontation with the judiciary.

And suddenly, this unseemly slugfest hit an institution that had, by and large, been above controversy in a land where almost everything concerned with public office has been touched by the ignominy of scandal.

We sent our legal eagle, Senior Editor Sumit Mitra, to get the story behind the story. Mitra is uniquely positioned for it. He has written most of our major legal stories in the past three years and has also exposed tensions in the judiciary and its increasing clashes with the executive. In a cover story ("Locking Horns", July 28, 1997), Mitra wrote about a confrontation over the government wanting a say in judicial appointments. He wrote later that year about the raging controversy over appointing Justice M.M. Punchhi as the Chief Justice of India and subsequently about the tug of war over transfer of judges. Says Mitra, who wrote the key elements for this week's cover story and was part of a team comprising Senior Editor S. Prasannarajan: "Ego clashes are destroying the institutions of the republic."

This, of course, is a great pity and quite unnecessary.

(Aroon Purie)

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