This is a guest post by KANAD BAGCHI
The Supreme Court has time and again emphasized the significance of adducing reasons while rendering administrative and judicial orders. Indeed, a reasoned opinion is arguably the fullest expression of the principle of audialterampartem and is a sine quo non in the dispensation of justice. It appears, one might argue, that the Delhi High Court (hereinafter ‘Court’) in its order granting interim bail to Kanhaiya seems to have taken the dictate of the Supreme Court rather earnestly in what was, needless to say, a very ‘detailed’ and ‘incisive’ analysis of the bail application.
While poetic prose is neither repugnant nor unknown to our Court’s jurisprudence, and the present order is yet another captivating addition to that, it is when prose and poesy subsumes legal reasoning, one begins to wonder whether the rule of law would be better served without it. It is more worrisome however, when the judiciary sidesteps its role from enforcing a strict interpretation of criminal law in an attempt at articulating its own perceived sense of nationalism, loyalty and allegiance, wholly divorced from the Constitution and the laws.
Continue reading Several Counts of Anti-Nationalism and Zero Counts of Sedition! Kanad Bagchi
