Judicial Discretion is with LAW, not Judge - Justice Raghuram, President Designate, CESTAT
I accompanied our Consulting Editor, Raghavendra Rao to meet the future President of CESTAT, Justice Raghuram, who had just retired as a judge of the AP High Court, with a huge reputation as a scholarly judge with a humane touch. We were ushered into his sparsely furnished home office where he spent a good part of his life fine-tuning the ragas of LAW. Very informal and casually dressed, the just retired Judge was looking extremely relaxed and jovial. When I asked him whether he was relaxed after a long and tiring innings at the bench, he replied that he was always like this, as he never felt that he was doing a great job as a judge. A Judge is like a fair price dealer - If you have a ration card and satisfy all the requirements, goods will be delivered. If you don't have a valid ration card, even if you are starving, and I have all the sympathies, I can't do anything. I am like a bank cashier - the money is not mine - if the cheque is correct and the account holder has balance in his account, I have to give him his cash. Discretion is not with the judge; it is with the Law. Quotes and thoughts like this flowed incessantly. The command over several subjects and the expressional clarity and flow like the Ganga in pristine purity (at the starting point of the great river) was amazing.
Taking a decision to become a High Court judge fourteen years ago was a tough one when his salary as a judge was one eighth of the income tax he was paying as a lawyer. It was perhaps only a call of duty and a sense of service, which must have persuaded him to join the bench from a lucrative bar - of course, friends, seniors and the then Chief Justice influenced the decision. They told him - if you don't join the bench, you will have no right to talk about quality in justice delivery system. It is perhaps this very same call, which he is taking now to join the CESTAT after retiring from the High Court. He believes that retiring a High Court judge at the age of 62 is a gross waste of national wealth as any way you are paying him 50% of his salary as pension - pay the other 50% and get work from him - especially when it is so difficult to find and appoint a judge in the High Court.
At 62, he is hale, healthy and hearty - he just had a medical check up and is certified to be in the pink of health with no BP, sugar and allied diseases.
He is concerned that our Law Colleges are not producing good law graduates thereby affecting the quality of the bar and the bench. The students from good law schools don't join the profession and prefer to work in high profile firms practicing transaction law without any experience of practising litigation law. We have judges who do not know what is res judicata and double jeopardy and they can pass death sentences!
The higher courts are burdened with executing the role of the lower functionaries. For example if a licence is cancelled by a Collector without giving notice to the dealer, the High Court Judge is called upon to perform the role of the Collector. If the Collector had followed the Law, the case would not have come to the High Court at all. It is not at all an economically wise decision to make High Court judges to perform the role of minor revenue officers and inspectors.
He feels there is a trust deficiency by the State towards the citizens and the people have accepted this and try to live up to the expectations. We are united in corruption and divided by caste. He feels that the object of tax laws is not mere collection of revenue - it is far more than that.
When I told him that a man of impeccable integrity like him would be the ideal choice as President of CESTAT, he said that once upon a time honesty was accepted as a natural trait and everyone was and was expected to be honest - today it is an additional qualification. He says that judges are well paid and after all how much money do you need - if you travel in a Maruti or a BMW, the last journey will probably be in an ambulance!
It went on and on like this for more than an hour and like all good things, our chat with the new President of CESTAT had to come to an end. As we wished him all the best in his new role and told him that in the Tribunal, he would be dealing with all big cases; he said there were no big or small cases; there are only big and small ways of dealing with the case. He said he would try his best in his new Avatar and after all, he is a human being and he might pass wrong orders, but certainly never for the wrong reasons.
Justice Raghuram proposes to join the CESTAT on Wednesday the 13th of March 2013.