BJP doesn't want a public tussle with judiciary

NEW DELHI: The BJP has distanced itself from the attempts of the ruling side to debate judicial interventions in Parliament. The party has decided to convey to the government that a discussion on separation of powers could be held, but in-camera.

The BJP feels that the Left is being provoked by the government to pick up a fight with the judiciary. BJP leaders said the project was against the larger public sentiment.

The party formally asked the government to convene an all-party meeting to discuss the ties between the three arms of the state —judiciary, legislature and the executive — even as it sought to shield the judiciary from attacks from the political class.

“The judiciary has the right to interpret the laws passed by the legislature, and to declare them constitutional or unconstitutional,” BJP spokesman VK Malhotra said reacting to a query here on Friday.

The BJP leader disapproved of the attempts made by the Lok Sabha to discuss a calling attention motion on the judiciary-legislature relations.

“Our stand is that it would have been better if the Prime Minister, in view of the sensitive nature of the subject, convened an all-party meeting,” Mr Malhotra said. The BJP spokesman put a stout defence of some of the recent judicial pronouncements.

“In the past two-and-a-half years, many laws were passed which just could not stand the test of judicial scrutiny, and had been motivated merely by vote-bank politics,” Mr Malhotra alleged, and cited the verdicts on IMDT repeal, striking down of the amendment to the Foreigners’ Act, Muslim reservations in Andhra Pradesh and the order doing away with the need to seek the government’s approval to prosecute public servants accused of corruption.

“When courts intervene in such issues, it is decried as judicial activism,” he said.