Judgment

SABYASACHI MUKHARJI, J. :- By an order dated 15th March, 1988 we declined in this matter to initiate contempt proceedings under S. 15(1)(a) and (b) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 (hereinafter called the Act) read with R. 3(a), (b) and (c) of the SC Contempt of Court Rules, 1975. We also on that date disposed of the application for intervention filed by Shri R.N. Trivedi. We stated that we will indicate our reasons by a separate judgment. We do so herein.

2. Shri P. Shiv Shanker who at the relevant time was the Honble Minister for Law, Justice and Company Affairs delivered a speech before a meeting of the Bar Council of Hyderabad on 28th November, 1987. Shri P.N. Duda, who is an advocate practising in the SC, has drawn our attention to that speech. According to him by that speech respondent No. 1, Shri P. Shiv Shanker has made statements against the SC which are derogatory to the dignity of this Court, attributing this Court with partiality towards economically affluent sections of the people and has used language which is extremely intemperate, undignified, and unbecoming of a person of his stature and position. It was stated that Shri P. Shiv Shanker formerly held the office of a Judge of the High Court before he resigned and took to politics.

3. We have read the entire speech. It is not necessary to set out the entire speech. The relevant portions of the said speech for the present purpose are as follows :

"(a) The SC composed of the element from the elite class had their unconcealed sympathy for the haves i.e. the Zamindars. As a result, they interpreted the word compensation in Art. 31 contrary to the spirit and the intendment of the Constitution and ruled the compensation must represent the price which a willing seller is prepared to accept from a willing buyer. The entire programme of Zamindari abolition suffered a setback. The Constitution had to be amended by the 1st, 14th and 17th Amendments to remove this oligarchic approach of the SC with little or no help. Ultimately, this rigid reactionary and traditional outlook of property, led to the abolition of property as a fundamental right."

4. He inter alia further observed

"(b) Holmes Alexander in his column entitled 9 Men of Terror Squad made a frontal attack on the functions of the U.S. SC. It makes an interesting reading :

Now can you tell what that black-robed elites are going to do next. Spring more criminals, abolish more protections. Throw down more ultras. Rewrite more laws. Chew more clauses out of the Constitution. May be, as a former Vice-President once said, the American people are too dumb to understand, but I would bet that the outcropping of evidence at the top in testimony before the US Senate says something about the swelling concern among the people themselves.

Should we not ask how true Holmes Alexander was in the Indian context."

5. The Minister further stated :

"(c) Twenty years of valuable time was lost in this confrontation presented by the Judiciary in introducing and implementing basic agrarian reforms for removal of poverty what is the ultimate result. Meanwhile even the political will seems to have given way and the resultant effect is the improper and ineffective implementation of the land reform laws by the executive and the Judiciary supplementing and complementing each other."

6. It was further stated by him:

"(d) The Maharajas and the Rajas were anachronistic in independent India. They had to be removed and yet the conservative element in the ruling party gave them privy purses. When the privy purses were abolished, the SC, contrary to the whole national upsurge, held in favour of the Maharajas."

"(e) Madhadhipatis like Keshavananda and Zamindars like Golaknath evoked a sympathetic cord nowhere in the whole country except the SC of India. And the bank magnates, the representatives of the elitist culture of this country ably supported by industrialists, the beneficiaries of independence, got higher compensation by the intervention of the S