SECOND INNINGS
A FEW MONTHS AFTER HE RETIRED from the Supreme Court, in November 2019, Ranjan Gogoi, the forty-sixth Chief Justice of India, became a parliamentarian. The Narendra Modi government hustled him into the Rajya Sabha, the upper house, as a nominated member. Gogoi received a sour welcome. As he began reciting the oath of office, on 19 March 2020, an irate opposition walked out, crying “Shame! Shame!” His bureaucratic esteem also sank. As the CJI, Gogoi had ranked fifth in the national warrant of precedence, India’s ceremonial ordering of public offices. As an MP, he occupies a lowly twenty-first step.
The nomination unleashed a maelstrom of criticism. Appointed for their eminence in the sciences, arts or social service, nominated MPs are often dismissed as political cronies. Madan Lokur, Gogoi’s sometime colleague in the Supreme Court, posed: “Has the last bastion fallen?” The judiciary, he implied, had succumbed to the executive.
Others alleged a quid pro quo. While a judge, Gogoi had handed a basket of critical victories to the Modi government. He deployed sly methods—accepting government affidavits in sealed envelopes, for one—that undercut litigants’ access to equal justice, and he stalled hearings in key cases, letting ministerial actions evade juridical scrutiny. Many decoded in his appointment a signal to sitting judges: conform, and thou too shalt profit.
Gogoi punched back. In a series of combative interviews, he dissed his critics and championed his record. But the more he vented, the more he unveiled the hidden networks that bind judges, lawyers and governments. These are key to grasping India’s grim legacy on judicial independence, rich in theory but poor in practice. The networks need dismantling: they imperil the court’s last scraps of integrity.
GOGOI AND HIS ENABLERS deployed precedent as their first line of defence. The Congress party, currently in the opposition, had in the past sponsored two Supreme Court judges to the upper house: Baharul Islam and Ranganath Misra. Islam left the bench in 1983, then contested and won a parliamentary seat; Misra did the same, in 1998, only some seven years after retiring as the CJI. Also, M Patanjali Sastri, India’s second CJI, had graced the Madras Legislative Council as a nominated member in 1958, four years after leaving the bench.
Judges often swap their black robes for the wider palette of political attire. In 1977, the anti-Congress Janata coalition fielded Kowdoor S Hegde for a seat in the Lok Sabha. A former member of the Supreme Court, Hegde had abandoned the bench in 1973 to protest Indira Gandhi’s ambush against the country’s three senior-most judges. He won his seat, and briefly served as the speaker of the lower house, too. Three others—K Subba Rao, Mohammad Hidayatullah and VR Krishna Iyer—contested elections for high constitutional offices. Though Rao (in 1967) and Iyer (in 1987) lost their presidential bids, Hidayatullah (in 1979) won a term as vice-president. Besides, former judges have also become state governors. In 1952, Prime
