Unseen justice
EducationWorld May 15 | EducationWorld
It™s an elementary canon of the science of jurisprudence: justice must not only be done; it must be seen to be done. Curiously, learned judges of the Karnataka high court seem blissfully or otherwise unaware of this dictum. If they are aware, it boggles the mind how they could have passed an order directing the BBMP (Bengaluru Municipal Corporation) to demolish 18 commercial complexes, seven apartment blocks comprising 140 residential flats, 178 temples, 15 churches, a government school, and a dental college and hospital sited on the dried-up Sarraki lake bed in J.P. Nagar, a fast developing suburb of the once garden city in which this publication is headquartered. Before passing this patently unjust judgement, their lordships should have borne in mind that there™s the letter of the law and the law of equity. For one, they should have questioned BBMP as to why it didn™t prevent or stop construction of buildings which have sprung up on the Sarraki lake bed for 35 years. In the cause of dispensing justice with equity, the corporation™s prolonged inertia should have been interpreted as consent. Therefore the law of equity demands that BBMP and real estate builders should compensate bona fide purchasers of property in the area for their loss. Holmesian skills and acumen are not required to discern that the notoriously corrupt babus of BBMP have conspired with real estate developers to sell tainted property to bona fide purchasers and vanish with their ill-gotten gains. In the circumstances, to pass judgement against innocent purchasers and let arch villains go scot free is a travesty of justice. Certainly, justice isn™t being seen to be done. 2:1 scoreline Agreed. Everybody deserves a vacation. Certainly after a long and exhausting election campaign, and especially if one has received an unprecedented drubbing, as Rahul Gandhi (RG), the bright white hope of the 130-year-old Congress Party did in General Election 2014 following which the number of Congress MPs in the Lok Sabha plunged from 209 to 44. Therefore, it would be churlish to grudge him the mysterious 56-day vacation he unilaterally availed in March-April, when he disappeared from the national radar. Nevertheless, certain inconvenient questions loom large and need to be posed in the public interest. Has anyone in a position of leadership and authority in government or the corporate world and elsewhere, taken a 56-day holiday in recent times? Certainly not your ™umble editor. Which also raises the inconvenient question of how RG has been able to afford a prolonged and inevitably hugely expensive vacation abroad given that his remuneration as an MP is Rs.50,000 per month. Presumably, the Great Youth Leader drew upon his assets which according to the estimates of the Delhi-based Association for Democratic Reforms aggregated Rs.9.40 crore in 2014. But this again raises the inconvenient question of how RG, who has never held down a job or acquired a degree or professional qualification despite being enroled in Cambridge and Harvard, managed to build this impressive assets base which has inflicted an inferiority…