Digging Deeper | The Biggest Supreme Court Judgments of the Year: Part 2

The Supreme Court of India has seen an interesting 2018. It began rather dramatically for the apex court - four of the senior-most judges of the court held a press conference. It might sound like a setup to a lawyer joke, but the punchline was not funny. It was dead serious. Justice Chelameswar, speaking for himself and Justices Ranjan Gogoi, MB Lokur, and Kurian Joseph, said, "The administration of the Supreme Court is not in order," and that "unless this institution is preserved, democracy will not survive in this country."

Their main contention was regarding the allocation of cases by then Chief Justice Dipak Misra. A letter the Justices wrote to the CJI read, "There have been instances where cases having far reaching consequences for the nation and the institution have been assigned by the chief justices of this court selectively to the benches ‘of their preference’ without any rational basis for such assignment. This must be guarded against at all costs."

This press conference, this "extraordinary event in the history of any nation," as Justice Chelameswar himself put it, marked the beginning of what was to be an eventful year in the life of the top court of the country. Since then, the court has seen a new Chief Justice (Ranjan Gogoi); the logjam on appointments to the higher judiciary appears to have improved; and along the way, several groundbreaking verdicts delivered.

Religion, politics, and law often make for strange bedfellows, and this year, as we saw post the Supreme Court verdict about allowing women of all ages into the Sabarimala temple, the three intersected sometimes in a combative manner and left behind inconclusive debates.

But this year was also about individual choices and even the freedom to exercise the constitutional right to passive euthanasia.

On part 2 of this Moneycontrol Deep Dive, we will go over some more judgments by the Supreme Court this year that broke away from normative ideas about life, death, and even nationalism. Listen on to discover just what we mean by this statement. Let us list out a few verdicts that underscore our point.