Manipur violence: Lessons on judicial restraint

Manipur has been under the grip of sectarian violence since May. Around 100 people have been killed, and many more have been injured and displaced. On the 15th of June, the house of the Union Minister of State for External Affairs was torched in Imphal. It is pertinent to note that the violence ensued in the state in the aftermath of a single bench decision of the Manipur High Court in which the Chief Justice, who was presiding the bench, directed the state government to include the Meitei community in the Scheduled Tribe (ST) category. The precise cause of the violence is the opposition to the demand for ST status for the Meitis by the existing tribal communities in the state, primarily the Kukis. This situation raises important issues regarding judicial accountability and restraint in such cases. The situation could have been avoided if the Manipur High Court had simply declined to hear such a plea. The people of Manipur are now bearing the cost of such a judicial decision. There are at least two counts on which the decision is patently wrong. First, it directly deals with a policy and not the law. The courts are meant to deal with questions of law, not policy questions. The government usually assigns a special status, like the ST status, to a particular community based on the socio-economic indicators, historical injustices and development concerns of the community in focus. This question can never be decided in a court of law because the courts are not equipped to deal with such issues, which per se have no bearing on the law. In this instance, the issue has to be decided politically because it will be decided based on metrics like socioeconomic development indicators, which the government can access better. The judge in a court of law is trained in the discipline of law and not economics, finance, sociology etc. To understand the point, should the Supreme Court of India order the RBI to hike or cut the interest rates? Or if the Indian Army should undertake a particular operation? Or if India should pursue a particular foreign policy - say friendship with China instead of the USA? It is evident that the courts obviously can’t make such decisions. In most cases in India and other countries as well, the courts do steer clear of interfering with policy issues. In India, especially recently, the courts have been proactive in delving into issues that may sometimes stray into policy areas. Such intervention has been a good idea because, more often than not, the courts have arrived at the correct outcome. However, at this juncture, it is essential to strictly entrench a threshold beyond which the courts should refrain from venturing into policy areas in light of the current situation in Manipur. The second reason the order of the Manipur High Court’s order is wrong is that it is also against the established precedents of the Supreme Court. The Chief Justice of India mentioned the same while hearing a batch of petitions pleading before the apex court on the safety of the tribal population in the state. Though the CJI orally remarked: We have to stay the order of the Manipur High Court. It is completely factually wrong and we gave time to Justice Muralidharan to remedy his error and he did not. We have to take a strong view against it now. It is clear if High Court judges do not follow constitution bench judgments then what should we do.. it is very clear, Ironically, the final order is very different from this oral remark. The decision was wrong on the law, as correctly identified by the Chief Justice of India. However, the Supreme Court did not stay the order while acknowledging that it was indeed wrong, because of a technicality that the issue was with a division bench (2-judge bench) of the Manipur High Court. It said: Since the Writ Appeal is pending before the Division Bench, we leave it open to the parties who are aggrieved by the order of the Single Judge to make appropriate submissions before the Division Bench in that regard. Under the scheme of the Constitution, the Supreme Court of India has enough powers to overcome any technicality if it deems it fit. Yet, the apex court did not stay the HC’s order. It is important to note that the consequences of venturing into the policy areas, in this case, have been disastrous and borne by the government’s executive wing. The apex court, to make matters worse, didn’t correct the problem at the first available opportunity. It will be fair to say that both the HC and the SC erred at some place or the other. It is, therefore, important that the judicial process in this light makes suitable amends. Judicial restraint in other jurisdictions has been developed through different doctrines like the political question doctrine in the US. The American judicial system takes pride in evolving the concept of judicial review and is the pioneer in establishing a truly independent judiciary.  Yet, the courts in the US do not get into a ‘political question’ because they deem it fit that the executive wing of the government should decide such questions. In a series of cases, the Supreme Court of India has held that this doctrine does not apply to the Indian system and hasn’t also suggested an effective alternative. We are clear that there are indeed certain areas where the courts have no legitimacy to interfere. Even then, the court is yet to evolve a concrete test to decide how such areas are to be identified. The current approach is to leave this to the wisdom and discretion of the court hearing a case. This is not a sustainable idea because it leads to situations like the one in Manipur. It is incumbent upon the Supreme Court to evolve a mechanism to address this so that the lower courts in the hierarchy are clear on what they should and should not be doing. It is high time that the Supreme Court itself should evolve or adopt a doctrine that defines the steps to identify areas where judicial decision-making will not lead to the most desirable outcomes. The author is an Assistant Professor of Law at National Law University Delhi. He tweets @raghavpandeyy Read all the Latest News , Trending News , Cricket News , Bollywood News , India News and Entertainment News here. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.