Happy New Year
The Bombay Bar Association wishes all its members a very happy and
prosperous 2010. May you all win all your cases (though, logically, this
means some of us won’t, but as one giant of the Bar famously said, “it
happens”).
And may you also all receive your fees in full and on time and may you
never receive another annoying call from Aisa-Vaisa bank.
And with Copenhagen done and dusted and buried, let us do our bit for
climate change and save power by solemnly pledging never to send
another SMS on Christmas, New Year, Diwali, Id, Papeti, Navruz, Makar
Sankranti, Gudi Padwa, Independence Day, Republic Day, or anyone’s
Jayanti. On any holiday or festival, in fact.
Not even for Bar Council elections.
Especially not for Bar Council elections.
Which are, by the way, on 7 January, so please vote.
Past Imperfect, Future Tense
2009 was tumultuous year for the judiciary. And no issue was
consistently more in the news than the matter of judicial appointments.
Anil Divan, Senior Counsel, wrote an excellent op-ed piece for “The
Hindu” in December: click here to
read his article, “Judicial Appointments: Agenda for
Reform”.
Anilbhai has never been known to mince words, and he doesn’t do so now.
He writes:
The prestige of the Supreme Court has never been lower
except during the Emergency of 1975-77 and in the aftermath of the
Habeas Corpus judgment. The higher judiciary is suffering from
self-inflicted wounds.
Quoting Justice Krishna Iyer (“The collegium is a disaster”), Anilbhai
argues for radical and sweeping reforms, examining the systems past and
present in the UK and South Africa.
Senior lawyers are not usually given to making strong statements. So
when lawyers of the calibre of Anil Divan, Fali Nariman and others
take such uncompromising positions, heed should be paid for these are
words not lightly or carelessly used. What is at stake here is much too
important and much too critical to be ignored.
2010 just has to be a better year than 2009. The alternative
ismuch too grim to contemplate.
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