Advocates should not fall prey to vested interests

Despite it being the fact that the current “agitation” of Telangana lawyers has political overtones, the credit must be given to the Chief Justice of India, the acting Chief Justice of the High Court of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh at Hyderabad and the common Governor for both these States for taking cognizance of the matter in the right earnest.

It is unfortunate that the ugly situation has been taken as a “great opportunity” by different political parties to settle their score with each other. Such a situation would certainly lower the good image of our judiciary.

The agitating lawyers, therefore, would do well by keeping their eyes and ears open to see that they do not fall prey to the machinations of the political parties. Temptations of all sorts offered by the vested interests with an evil design of weakening the judicial fabric must be abhorred by the agitating clan, particularly the leaders of all lawyers’ associations.

It is keeping this in view that the agitating parties must devise their strategies to find an amicable solution to the disturbing situation. In short, let them look to the higher judiciary for such a solution which would be the right approach to find the way out.

All the political parties, including those ruling at Centre and both the States have a pious duty to extend a helping hand to the higher judiciary in this regard. There is nothing wrong in putting the judiciary on a higher pedestal than the government and political parties in such a situation.

However, in resolving the situation the element of urgency needs to be given the paramount consideration because any delay in dousing the current fire of agitation may result into greater loss and damage to the globally lauded democratic set-up of our country let alone the litigants.

Uniform Civil CodeA lot has been said about the so-called “freedom” of the religion in the past. Those who take a definite stand for or against this freedom are branded by the opposite side as “hardliners” or “fringe groups.”

The nation-wide debate on whether or not it is possible or desirable to have the uniform civil code for the country has not yielded any new viable solution. In fact, in the name of personal laws and the practices enlisted therein, some particular religious groups have been taking undue advantage of the Constitutional provisions of freedom of religion and have developed vested interests in retaining their archaic and discriminatory “personal laws.”

At this stage, an important question needs to be considered : if there can be uniform criminal laws then why not uniform civil laws? In the name of religious freedom how a secular democratic country like ours can allow a person to marry four women, divorce them by just saying “talaq” three times, use high-sounding loudspeakers five times a day all 365 days to offer prayers to God, indulge in tempting the poor to convert to their religions, etc. Indeed, these are very serious matters and the majority community is awfully concerned about them.

By any logic there cannot be different laws for the same citizens of a country. Granting concessions to the unprivileged people of any religion is okay, but creating watertight compartments among people cannot be accepted as it has potentials to develop into vested interests.
Let us put the nation before self and our religions for ensuring the climate of peace and harmony. This is possible only by adopting the principle of “one nation, one law.”

Hi, darling”Yes, it is true. Exactly these words were suggested by a court to the estranged husband who was under fire from his wife.
The case relates to the Court of Chief Judicial Magistrate at Khargone, Madhya Pradesh where a wife had filed a case for divorce alleging her husband was neglecting her. The CJM, Ganga Charan Dubey, after hearing the plight of the wife, advised her husband to say exactly the same words mentioned above daily to his wife for a week and stay along with her.

On earlier occasions too, Dubey known for his novel ways to resolve the family disputes had suggested a husband to take his wife frequently for an evening walk and offer ice cream to her, advised another husband to present a sari to the wife and still another husband to take his wife at least once in a week to a restaurant and treat her favourite dish.

And believe it or not, these tantrums have indeed, worked well on the warring couples and resulted in the amicable settlement of matrimonial cases. Kudos to Dubey Sahab, may your clan increase by leaps and bounds.