Why Justice Datta’s attack on petitioner in VVPAT verdict is worrisome for PILs
He wrote in his judgment that he had serious doubts about the credentials of the Association of Democratic Reforms, linking it with efforts to weaken India.
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Justice Dipankar Datta’s comments attacking the Association for Democratic Reforms in a judgment of the Supreme Court on Friday is the latest instance of a recent trend of constitutional courts casting aspersions on the intentions of public interest litigants.
Such extra-legal attacks make the petitioners a target for harassment by state actors and discourage public interest litigation, legal experts said. They added that judges should stick to the law and the merits of the case they are meant to adjudicate.
Datta was part of a two-judge bench, along with Justice Sanjiv Khanna, that rejected a public interest litigation by the Association for Democratic Reforms seeking the tallying of all Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail slips to verify votes cast through electronic voting machines.
The judgment featured concurring opinions by Khanna and Datta. Khanna’s opinion was co-signed by Datta. This is unusual. The norm is that when an opinion by a judge is co-signed by other judges, they do not give separate opinions. Equally, when there are concurring opinions by different judges in a judgment, they do not co-sign the other opinions.
Datta’s opinion did not differ materially from Khanna’s in terms of the law. What is striking about it is the comments he made in the fifth paragraph of...
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