By Vishnu Makhijani, IANS
New Delhi : A feisty woman lawyer who has obtained a Supreme Court stay on appointments to a tribunal on money laundering says the fight has only begun, with the issue headed to a constitutional bench for a final settlement.
“It’s going to be a long haul but I am determined to ensure that the judicial system gets its due,” Pareena Swarup, who is serving her third term as the secretary of the Supreme Court Bar Association, told IANS.
Acting on her public suit, the Supreme Court this week stayed the selection process for appointing a chairperson and member of the adjudicating authority and appellate tribunal constituted under the Prevention of Money Laundering (Amendment) Act of 2005.
The court also issued notice to the government on Swarup’s claim that the current selection process violates the constitution, which envisages an independent judiciary.
Under the act, a selection committee headed by the revenue secretary is to name the chairperson and three members of the appellate tribunal. The same committee will also name the chairperson of the adjudicating authority and its two members.
For the appointment of the tribunal’s chairperson, the chief justice of India has to suggest three names from which the selection committee has to select one.
This process had Swarup seeing red and prompted her to file the public suit earlier this year. According to her, it was the chief justice or his nominee who should head the selection committee.
“The selection process would have a non-judicial person sitting on top of the chief justice and dictating terms. This would harm the judicial system,” said Swarup, who obtained her law degree from Delhi University in 1995 and has been practising in the Supreme Court since then with her father and brother.
“The entire community of lawyers was being left out. We are the actual legal people and yet we were neither appreciated nor called for an interview. This is totally against the independence of the judiciary,” contended Swarup, whose grandfather Jagdish Swarup was India’s solicitor general in the early 1970s.
“The system would be put in place by the government and would function under it. How could it be expected to act independently and fearlessly?”
A similar controversy had erupted after the Competition Act was enacted in 2002 to set up a Competition Commission to replace the Monopolies and Restrictive Trade Practices Commission.
The main aim was to ensure greater freedom for the private sector and reduce government interference in the era of liberalisation ushered in by then finance minister and now Prime Minister Manmohan Singh in 1991.
The government appointed a bureaucrat to head the commission and the Supreme Court lashed out at this, terming the Competition Act “a piece of suspect legislation”.
It also suggested that a judge head the commission. The government immediately cancelled the appointment of the bureaucrat it had named to head the commission but did not agree with the court’s suggestion.
A constitution bench of the Supreme Court is to now hear the issue. Swarup said her suit would be clubbed with this.
“As I said, it’s going to be a long haul but I’m determined to see this through,” said Swarup, who schooled at the Loretto Convent and graduated from Lady Shri Ram College here.
She won her first term as Supreme Court Bar Association secretary in 2004 by a record margin of 750 votes, the other seven contestants between them garnering a similar number of votes.
(Vishnu Makhijani can be contacted at [email protected])