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        The common millions of India are shell-shocked by the judgement delivered yesterday by the Bench comprising Justices Tarun Chatterji and P K Balasubramanian of the Supreme Court of India on the Public Interest Litigation (PIL) filed by Manohar Lal Sharma, seeking cancellation of the nomination papers of UPA Presidential candidate Pratibha Patil. While dismissing the PIL, the Supreme Court seems to have lost sight of the fundamental issue of whether a person with incriminating and criminal antecedents like Pratibha Patil should at all be permitted to occupy the highest Constitutional Office of the President of India. The common man in the street is of the view that the Supreme Court of India has only played the role of a transit post office by 'Giving Liberty to the petitioner Manohar Lal Sharma to approach the appropriate authorities for redressal of his grievances.'

        In these columns yesterday, I had observed that the besieged millions of India are solidly supporting the PIL filed by Manohar Lal Sharma and the sacred cause of the imperative national public need for preventing the disaster of our having a President with such dubious credentials/ antecedents as Pratibha Patil. I am now pained to note that Manohar Lal Sharma has been artificially propped up by the supporters of Pratibha Patil to get a 'planned ruling' from the Supreme Court in her favour, thus perverting, subverting and prostituting the Due Process of Law.

        The Writ Petition filed by Manohar Lal Sharma, advocate in the Supreme Court of India challenging the nomination of Prathibha Patil for the Presidential Election, which was dismissed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court yesterday, does not seem to be a true Public Interest Litigation (PIL) because the crucial question as regards prevention of criminalisation of politics by political parties controlling sizeable chunks of the Electoral College through their members in Parliament and Legislatures was not properly represented by the writ petitioner. The question posed to the Hon'ble Supreme Court ought to have been this simple one: QUE CUSTODIET EST IPSOS CUSTODIOS? Who guards the Guardsman? Such a question was not raised before the Hon'ble Court, which dismissed the writ petition, based on earlier decisions of the Apex Court in Khare's case vide AIR 1957 S.C. 404, Babu Rao Patel's case vide AIR 1968 S.C. 904 and S.K. Singh vs. V.V. Giri vide AIR 1970 S.C. 2097, wherein it was held that disputes arising out of or in connection with the Presidential or Vice-Presidential Election should be decided by the Apex Court ex post facto to such election. All these decisions pertain to the Presidential and Vice-Presidential election procedure which is regulated and governed by the Presidential and Vice-Presidential Elections Act 1952 (Central Act 31 of 1952) which is silent on prevention of criminalisation of politics. In Mohini Jain and Unni Krishnan cases the Apex Court held that where a vacuum is created by a legislation being silent on some crucial aspects, the Apex Court has to fill in such gap by formulating suitable guide lines which operate as law until Parliament enacts a law on the lines of such guide lines. Under Art.71 clause (1) of the Constitution it is the Supreme Court's sovereign and supreme duty to do so. This deathly failure to do so has resulted in the denial and death of Law, Equity and Natural Justice.

        It is now common knowledge that the writ petition filed by Manohar Lal Sharma was apparently masterminded by a pro-Prathibha Patil group, with the fond hope of creating an estoppel or res judicata to thwart any proper and legally sustainable PIL writ petition that may be filed in the future, just in order to ensure the immediate smooth passage of otherwise impeachable Pratibha Patil's progress on her road to the Presidency. The Congress Political Goons and Criminals seem to have lost sight of the fact that is no estoppel or res judicata in PIL writ arena as there can be no estoppel against the Indian Constitution.

        The great Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes (1841-1935) has observed that since the best part of his life was spent as part of Judiciary, he would have been less than fair to himself not to seek to critique and correct that institution when he notices something going wrong. Judge Jerome Frank has rejected the suggestion that 'In a democracy it can ever be unwise to acquaint the public with the truth about the shortcomings of our Judiciary.' The judiciary is not the least dangerous branch of Government. They send people to prison and decide with important consequence. Because the judiciary has such a central role in the government of society we should (in the words of Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes) wash - with cynical acid this aspect of public life. Unless and until we treat Judges as fallible human beings whose official conduct is subject to the same critical analysis as that of other organs of government, Judges will remain members of a Priesthood who have great powers over the rest of the community, but who are otherwise isolated from them.'

        Justice V R Krishna Iyer quotes the following words of Felix Frankfurter, a great Judge of the US Supreme Court, with great relish, enthusiasm and approval: 'Judges commonly are elderly men, and are more likely to hate at sight any analysis to which they are not accustomed, and which disturbs repose of mind, than to fall with novelties. Judges as persons or Courts as institutions are entitled to no greater immunity from criticism than other persons or institutions. Just because the holders of Judicial Office are identified with the interests of Justice, they may forget their common human frailties.'

        I am quoting these judicial authorities only to highlight and to make it known to the larger innocent public of India that the two learned judges of the Supreme Court who dismissed a PIL on flimsy technical grounds have failed to discharge the constitutional duties cast upon them under Article 71 clause (1) of the Indian Constitution. Article 71 clause (1) states: 'All doubts and disputes arising out of or in connection with the election of a President or Vice-President shall be enquired into and decided by the Supreme Court whose decision shall be final.' Here doubts have been raised about the credentials and antecedents (not civil if not criminal!!) of Pratibha Patil.

        The Judges who sat in the Bench of the Supreme Court of India in the case in question, would not have been totally unaware of the agitated and disturbed public feelings and sentiments against the candidature of Pratibha Patil and the criminal antecedents of the close members of her family, particularly in the light of the wide spread media exposure of the deeds/ misdeeds of Pratibha Patil and her allies during the last 25 years in several walks of public life and welfare in Maharashtra. Sterile and stale technicalities apart, it is the Supreme and fundamental duty of the Supreme Court to understand the paramount national need to prevent the criminalisation of Indian politics in our Constitutional democracy, with respect to the Presidential Election 2007, more particularly in view of the facts and circumstances of the case brought out by eminent journalists like Arun Shourie, Dr. Nalapat, Sandhya Jain etc. pointing to the probable/ possible complicity of Pratibha Patil in various serious offences including shielding of conspiracy to murder. Perhaps the two eminent Judges are unaware of the following words of Justice Cardozo: 'The great tides and currents which engulf the rest of men, do not turn aside in their course and pass the Judges by.' By dismissing the PIL petition of Manohar Lal Sharma, as though it related to a small and petty civil dispute of no significance to the nation, the learned Judges of the Supreme Court have allowed the common people of India to be beached by the rising tide of criminal Congress history. All the leading pillars of the collapsing Ship of Indian State — The Executive, The Legislature and The Judiciary — seem to be participating with great gusto and enthusiasm in this tidal process of criminalisation of Indian politics and public life.