By Siddhartha Tripathy
At a time when the protracted impasse between the Centre and the farmer unions protesting the new farm laws was showing no signs of petering out, the Supreme Court of India has finally made a direly needed move to restore order amid the chaos around the national capital and chart a road to resolution.
After hearing the petitions challenging the constitutional validity of the three farm laws, along with those challenging the farmers’ protest on the grounds that it infringes upon the citizens’ fundamental right to free movement, the apex court demonstrated through its ruling the absolute importance of judiciary as one of the three pillars of democracy.
The three-judge Supreme Court bench – chaired by Chief Justice of India SA Bobde, along with Justices AS Bopanna and V Ramasubramania – put the farm laws on hold, suspending their implementation in the country with immediate effect.
Expressing “extreme” disappointment with the negotiations that have happened so far between the Narendra Modi government and the agitating farmers, the top court said its verdict was in view of the serious challenges faced by the farmers and its focus on preventing further destruction of life and property.
“These are matters of life and death … We are trying to solve the problem in the best way,” CJI Bobde stated.
Towards that cause, the top court set up a four-member committee of agriculturists – comprising Harsmirat Mann, Ashok Gulati (agriculture economist), Dr Pramod Kumar Joshi (former Director National Academy of Agricultural Research Management) and Anil Dhanawat – to hear out the farmers’ grievances and submit a report before it.
While the court did pull up the Modi government for failing to find a way to satisfactorily resolve the problems of the protesting farmers, it also made it amply clear how it expected the farming community and its supporters to cooperate with the proposed resolution process.
In what is seen as a response to some sections of the protesting farmer unions that claimed the previous day it was too late to form a committee for a resolution, the CJI advised farmer protest representatives against boycotting the newly formed committee as it was meant “to ascertain what the real problem is”.
When Advocate ML Sharma, the legal representative of the protesting farmers, raised their concerns over Prime Minister Modi not coming to meet them during the negotiations, the CJI brushed it aside saying the Prime Minister could not be asked to do so as he was “not a party in the case”. Even as the apex court bench practically steered the biggest move yet to resolve the deadlock, Chief Justice Bodge also said the farmers could protest indefinitely if they so wished.
Only time will tell how effective this January 12 ruling will be in resolving the long-drawn-out farmer’s protest that has led to dozens of deaths so far – but given the current circumstances, Supreme Court could not possibly have done any better today as the ultimate court of Indian judiciary.
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