SC Constitution Bench to deliver NJAC verdict today

The Supreme Court will on October 16 pronounce its judgement on the constitutional validity of National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC), a body created to end the two-decade-old Supreme Court Collegium system of judges appointing judges to the highest courts in the land.

A five-judge bench of Justices J.S. Khehar, J. Chelameswar, Madan B. Lokur, Kurian Joseph and A.K. Goel had reserved its judgement on July 15 after a marathon hearing for 31 days on the issue of validity of the 99th Constitutional amendment and the NJAC Act.

The petitions challenging the new legislation were filed by Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association (SCAORA) and others contending that the new law encroached on judicial independence.

The judgment would decide the fate of the powerful Supreme Court Collegium and its so-far undisputed authority to appoint judges to the higher judiciary as it did for the past two decades.

The parliament had unanimously voted in favor of the NJAC law and the Constitutional Amendment. The latter was then ratified by 20 State Assemblies and had received the Presidential assent.

One of the contentious provisions of the new law was the inclusion of two eminent persons to the NJAC which included Chief Justice of India, two senior most judges of the apex court and the Union Law Minister.

Under the law, two eminent persons will be nominated by a committee consisting of the Chief Justice of India, Prime Minister, and Leader of Opposition (LoP) in the Lok Sabha or where there is no such LoP, the leader of single largest Opposition Party in the House.

Further, it envisages that of the two eminent persons, one would be from the Scheduled Castes or Scheduled Tribes or OBCs, minority communities or a woman.

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Lalu ‘out of sync’ with new Bihar

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“Lalu Prasad had given backward castes a voice and self-respect, but his own caste’s dominance gave him a bad name,” said an ageing Manoranjan Chaurasia, taking a break from a game of cards in a field in his village in Khagaria district.

Youngsters of his caste aren’t this charitable and display impatience with Mr. Prasad’s politics. “We need industry. I have stayed in Gujarat and Maharashtra. People look down upon Bihar as we don’t have industry here,” Prabhash Chaurasia said, disagreeing with the elder village resident. He said he supported the BJP.

The political graph of Rashtriya Janata Dal supremo Lalu Prasad is falling as aspirations change, caste politics becomes nuanced and people charge the RJD with corruption and poor governance.

Mr. Prasad said days back that the present contest was between forward and backward castes. BJP ally and Mahadalit leader of the Musahar caste Jitan Ram Manjhi promptly disagreed.

The statement reflected Bihar politics of the 1990s, which seems to have changed now.

His conviction on corruption charges and image of poor governance apart, Mr. Prasad’s decline also stems from a gradual change in backward caste politics in Bihar. The first change was non-Yadavs seeking an autonomous space within OBC politics, which was symbolised by Mr. Kumar allying with the BJP — then seen as an upper caste party — to take on Mr. Prasad in 1994. The alliance defeated the RJD in 2005, and the BJP accepted Mr. Kumar as NDA’s leader in Bihar.

The scenario has changed further now. OBCs are no longer a bloc, and backward caste politics displays fragmentation even as individual backward castes seek welfare schemes and affirmative action. They are open to aligning with the BJP though many of them have fond memories of Mr. Kumar’s rule.

“Narendra Modi and Sushil Modi being from backward castes, OBCs and EBCs are increasingly open to allying with the BJP,” JNU academic Badri Narayan, an expert on caste, told The Hindu. He pointed to internal differentiation between backward castes. Sajjan Kumar Singh, a JNU doctoral student of politics who has surveyed Bihar for a month, said, “Each backward caste is looking at its own interest. There isn’t a bloc any longer; there are many individual castes.”

This affords the BJP a good opportunity to reach out to small, individual castes. This reporter’s visits to villages of OBCs and EBCs revealed interesting trends.

Chief Minister Nitish Kumar had sought to carve out a coherent EBC block as Chief Minister. But these castes aren’t acting as a group. Many have fond memories of Mr. Kumar’s rule but do not share the same sentiment for the RJD.

With an overarching backward caste politics no longer the glue, many backward castes in Yadav regions are uneasy with Yadav dominance, observers say. A Congress leader said he feared this would give the BJP a hidden advantage, as Yadavs outnumbered the BJP-supporting dominant castes, the Bhumihars and Rajputs.

The same may be true for Scheduled Castes in regions where Yadavs have a strong presence. Musahars of Barkhaban village in Gaya are with the NDA. They work in fields owned by Yadavs and the smirk on their faces is unmistakable when they say the landowners vote for Mr. Prasad.

The grand alliance still commands a Muslim-Yadav-Kurmi vote bank.

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Parleys to ward off Patel protests

Hectic behind-the-scene efforts are on to ensure that the Patel reservation agitation does not cast a shadow on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to the United States. Alarm bells in Delhi and Ahmedabad started ringing when a group calling itself the Overseas Patidar Action Committee (OPAC), and expressing sympathy with the Hardik Patel-led agitation in Gujarat, threatened to stage protests at the venues Mr. Modi was scheduled to visit.

Apart from his engagements in New York, Mr. Modi is also scheduled to address the Indian community in San Jose, California on September 27.

According to sources, a senior official from Gujarat posted in Delhi was tasked with the fire-fighting.

“Apart from the groups already in the U.S., several people went from Gujarat to speak to the Patel community in the U.S. to dissuade them from protests.

“The back-channel conciliation is being coordinated from Delhi,” said a source close to the developments.

Several Indian-American community groups since have given statements in favor of the Prime Minister’s visit.

Bharat Barai, founder of the Indian American Community Foundation (IACF) in the U.S. spoke to The Hindu confirming that there “had been serious apprehensions of protests” but said that “even if there is any protest now, it won’t have more than a 100 people at the most.”

He added that not just people from India, but Indian Americans have been working hard to defuse the crisis. “Even if there is a protest, it will be a feeble one,” he said.

Mr. Barai, who was the man behind the Prime Minister’s Madison Square Garden event last year, said the details of Mr. Modi’s community reception were worked out at an IACF meeting on September 5.

“In that meeting, Mr. Tejas Bakhia [leader of the OPAC] demanded that some of the money that had been collected for the Madison Square Garden event should be handed over to the families of those who died in the police firing during the agitation,” he said. Nine people died in Ahmedabad in August following firing by the police on protesters.

Mr. Barai also said that people supportive of the Prime Minister had said that they were willing to contribute privately to help the families of the victims of police action, but wanted the PM’s visit to be kept separate from domestic politics. The outcome of that meeting was a stalemate.

“I know most of the Indian community in Jersey have been holding meetings with them to ensure everything goes smoothly,” he said.

A meeting at Albert Palace in Jersey was also called to mobilize support for the PM’s visit. The event in San Jose is already sold out.

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