JUDGMENT

KRISHNA IYER, J :—Every meritless petition for special leave commits a double sin and here we are scandalized that the sinner is the State itself. When thousands of humble litigants are waiting in the queue hungry for justice and the docket-logged court is desparately wading through the rising flood, every lawless cause brought recklessly before it is a dubious gamble which blocks the better ones from getting speedy remedy. Here is an instance.

2. If - this is a big if - I assume some of the uncontradicted statements in the counter - affidavit and writ petition to be true, read in the light of the High Courts decision against the Government twice over that its action was mala fide and void, this disturbing petition, by the State of Punjab for leave to appeal, which I now dismiss, lays bare the basics of power pathology and judicial philosophy in the unhappy setting of personal vendetta fuelling the politics of compulsory land acquisition. Prof. Millers assertion that the SC "acting as national conscience of the ......people does mandate standards towards which public and private behaviour is as true in our jurisdiction as in his country."

3. The factual matrix, enough to unf