The first writ against Common Law Admission Test (CLAT) 2012 should not have been dismissed by the Delhi high court, said a division bench of the court admitting a letters patent appeal against the dismissal today.
Justices Rajiv Shakdher and Vipin Sanghi sought a response from the 2012 CLAT convenor NLU Jodhpur on the actions taken by the law school on the representations against the examination process made by candidates this year, confirmed appellants’ counsel Aditi Bhat.
She added that the court was not inclined to re-hold the examination or recalculate the marks.
The court admitted the appeal to look into the prayer in the writ asking for the constitution of a permanent CLAT convening committee instead of continuing with the current system of rotating the convenorship between the participating national law schools.
“In the next hearing on 23 July, the court will mostly restrict itself to this aspect. The case is going to be argued on the larger issue,” explained Bhat.
Co-counsel Gopal Sankaranarayanan said: “The single judge was wrong in believing that we were coming to court only on the issue of declaration of result, whereas our objection was not against the result being declared. We had asked for the constitution of a permanent body to institutionalise CLAT, which was not premature”.
He told Legally India that it had been “blatantly wrong” to dismiss the writ as there was a larger peril involved than just the current examination, and that it extended to a longer period and to issues concerning other similar exams as well.
“As far as NLU Jodhpur is concerned, some injustice has resulted. Representations were made to them but they gave no responses, took no steps.”
“If before declaring the results they would have taken the representations into account, it would have the changed the final names in the list. But they didn’t make any changes despite giving a solemn representation to the court. This was also challenged before the division bench,” added Sankaranarayanan.
Three CLAT 2012 candidates Ujjwal Madan, Shubham Sinha, and Osho Donnie Ashok had petitioned in the Delhi high court against NLU Jodhpur, the Bar Council of India, and the ministry of human resource development for questioning examinees on topics which were out of the syllabus prescribed by the CLAT committee for 2012, on 24 May 2012.
Two days later, and a day prior to the declaration of the exam’s results, Justice Sunil Gaur had dismissed the writ in limine.
On being informed that the CLAT committee was already discussing solutions, Gaur had observed that the petition was premature and that the proper course for the petitioners would be to make representations to the CLAT convenor and seek judicial remedy after the exam’s result was declared.
Click here to download full draft of the Letters Patent appeal
Comments
As far as I am aware, a lot of print media or established media in India and abroad does NOT use "Justice" after the first time they refer to a judge. Please feel free to provide significant counter-examples if that way inclined.
In any case, I think it is a little simplistic to draw an inference, as #4 and #4.1 imply, that we do not respect the judiciary.
This is not about respect, it is about consistency as well as about what is reasonable, fair and practicable. And ultimately, it should not matter.
At the end of the day a judge serves in a public office, like the president of India, an MP, the queen of England, the head of a government department, a university professor and so on. I think obviously judges deserve great respect for the difficult and important job that they do, but so do lots of other professionals or public servants. And sometimes judges (or others) most definitely do not necessarily deserve all that much respect either.
Using the honorific over and over again is fine for a place such as a court room, which is governed by its own rules and reasons, but a journalist should not be bound by the same traditions or formalities.
Judges may be protected more than most by contempt of court laws, but even judges are humans who are doing their job at the end of the day, and they should be written about as we would write about any other human doing their job.
A journalist's job is to be objective. Excessive use of an honorific, can lead to objectivity being compromised or at least that perception being created in the mind of a reader and in the mind of a journalist.
It is also a case of a special rule applying to one class of persons over another, for fairly abitrary reasons.
Let our content speak for itself. If it is unfairly disrespectful of a judge or anyone else, please call us up on it.
But please do not infer a greater agenda of disrespect, or apply the rules of one profession to another.
Best wishes,
Kian
1. NY Times - " ...constitutes a ‘search,’ Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority.. What occurred in this case,” Justice Scalia went on..." (http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/24/us/police-use-of-gps-is-ruled-unconstitutional.html?pagewanted=all )
2. The Hindu - "A Bench of Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sudha Misra..accept the plea. ...Writing the judgment, Justice Katju said: “There is no .." (http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/article1516644.ece )
3. Indian Express - "...that the hearing before Justices Markandey Katju and Gyan Sundha Misra... Justice Katju, in reply, gave them..." (http://www.indianexpress.com/news/tis-hazari-judge-pleads-for-mercy-after-sc-flak/788769/0 )
4. CNN - IBN - "Justice Madan Bhimarao Lokur, who as Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh High Court recently struck down. ...Justice Lokur...who will continue. ...Justice Lokur recently suspended and ordered.." (http://ibnlive.in.com/generalnewsfeed/news/justice-lokur-elevated-to-supreme-court/1007399.html )
NB - Should there be any argument that trends have changed, i wish to clarify that all these reports are quite recent (late 2011 & 2012).
However, every publication normally uses their own style guide, and as long as they are consistent that should be fine.
Take two of arguably the world's most influential and important news agencies, Bloomberg:
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-05-15/scalia-turns-advocate-against-obama-as-queries-criticized.html
and Reuters:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/04/25/us-usa-immigration-arizona-sotomayor-idUSBRE83O1IO20120425
Or, the highly respected Guardian in the UK:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/27/supreme-court-justices-health-insurance-mandate
Or Mint in India (or even PTI copy such as in this case)
http://www.livemint.com/2012/05/10143409/SC-asks-Govt-to-probe-exCJI-B.html
I am sure there are countless examples and counter-examples on either side, sometimes probably even in the same paper, which I think proves there is no right and wrong side in this.
Therefore, the best approach to me, seems to be consistent in whatever you do, and to try and stick to those rules.
For the reasons outlined above and earlier, I think treating a judge's honorific in exactly the same way as that of any other person is preferable and more professional for a publication.
We are not there to blindly pander or pay respect, to lawyers, judges or anyone else, but only to report the facts as well as we can.
Best wishes,
Kian