Spotlight On Recent Appointments To The Supreme Court - Justice Dipankar Datta

A general criticism of the Indian Courts has been that very little is known to the public about the judges being recommended by respective Collegium before their appointments, on merit and suitability. A designated Secretariat ideally should do the job, unfortunately we don’t have such a mechanism. LiveLaw has taken an initiative to share relevant information about the appointees and we are starting with the appointments to the Apex Court. The focus is to shed light on some of their significant high court judgments.We traced the judicial career of Justice Pankaj Mithal in Part 1. In this second part, we offer a glimpse into the judicial philosophy of Justice Dipankar Datta. Justice Datta’s elevation to the Supreme Court along with his background has been referred to in this piece published by us earlier. Justice Datta was elevated to the Bench of the High Court at Calcutta as a permanent Judge on June 22, 2006. He was elevated as the Chief Justice of Bombay High Court on April 28, 2020. With his date of appointment in the Supreme Court being December 12 last year, he will have a fairly long tenure of more than seven years and retire on February 8, 2030. Born on February 9, 1965, Justice Datta belongs to a legal family, being the son of late Salil Kumar Datta, a former Judge of the High Court at Calcutta, and brother in law of Justice Amitava Roy, former Judge of the Supreme Court. Datta was awarded LL.B by the University of Calcutta (first batch of 5 year law course) in 1989. Enrolled as an advocate on November 16, 1989, he practised mainly in the High Court at Calcutta, as well as in the Supreme Court and other High Courts in Constitutional and civil matters. He was a junior standing counsel for West Bengal from May 16, 2002 to January 16, 2004 and was a counsel for the Union of India since 1998. He appeared for a number of educational authorities and institutions including the University of Calcutta, W.B.School Service Commission and W.B.Board of Secondary Education. He was a guest lecturer on Constitutional law of India in the University College of Law, University of Calcutta, from 1996-97 to 1999-2000. In defence of free speechIn Ambikesh Mahapatra and Others v The State of West Bengal and others (2015), the petitioner was arrested by the police for forwarding a cartoon featuring the Chief Minister and two Central ministers, via email and circulating its print-out. The petitioner was a professor in Chemistry employed by Jadavpur University, whereas the second petitioner was a septuagenarian engineer, who, prior to his superannuation, was an employee of the State government. The West Bengal Human Rights Commission took suo motu cognizance of the matter. The WBHRC on August 13, 2012 found that the petitioners were deprived of liberty by reason of unlawful arrests and their human rights had indeed been violated.The WBHRC noted that no law in our country prevents criticism against Ministers or Chief Minister however popular they may be or even a door to door critical campaign against Ministers unless the campaign offends any prohibition in law. The Commission noted that the two accused were arrested by the police a fortnight after the subject cartoon was circulated and that too on the complaint of a person who did not even receive the e-mail. The police arrested those persons from their residential complex when they were peaceful at the dead of night, without even seeing the cartoon."The way the police officers arrested Professor Ambikesh Mahapatra and Subrata Sengupta on April 12, 2012 at 11 p.m. for circulation, a fortnight ago, the subject cartoon by email and for which twice regret was expressed by them and did not arrest any one of the agitating mob who wrongfully confined those two persons in the presence of the police in office of their residential complex makes out a case of police excess and highhandedness, especially when those two persons are otherwise respectable citizens and without any criminal record", the Commission noted.In Paragraph 32 of its order, the state Human Rights Commission held that citizens who are expressing or airing a critical opinion about the ruling party cannot be picked up from their residence by the police at the instance of an agitated mob whose members are unhappy with the critical views of those two persons. "If this is allowed to continue then not only the human rights of the dissenters will perish, free speech which is the lifeblood of our democracy will be gagged. Constitutional provisions will be reduced to parchment promises and we will be heading towards a totalitarian regime in complete negation of democratic values in the largest democracy of the world", the Commission observed.Consequently, it recommended initiation of departmental proceedings against the police officials and payment of compensation of Rs.50,000 to each of the petitioners by the state. The state government declined to accept the WBHRC’s recommendation and the matter then...

Spotlight On Recent Appointments To The Supreme Court - Justice Dipankar Datta

V Venkatesan

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