DIPAK MISRA: SOLUTION PROVIDER TO CONTROVERSIES

DIPAK MISRA: SOLUTION PROVIDER TO CONTROVERSIES

Dipak Misra, a gem to the Indian judiciary, is known for delivering judgments to the most looked after matters by the media and the masses starting from his Indian National Anthem order or his Arunachal Pradesh emergency lifting order in merely 3 minutes or uplifting of Criminal Defamation law of India to the recent Jallikattu verdict. In Priyanka Srivastava and Anr v State of UP and Ors, his 192-word opening sentence on abuse of procedural provisions is also considered to be the longest sentences ever written in a Supreme Court judgment.

Career of Justice Dipak Misra

Born on 3 October 1953 and the nephew of Ranganath Misra (Chief Justice of Supreme Court from September 1990 to November 1991), Justice Dipak Misra has worked as former Chief Justice of Patna and Delhi High Courts and presently the Chief Justice of India. He enrolled at the Bar in 1977 and then practised at Odisha High Court. He was later, in 1996 was appointed as the Additional Judge of the Odisha High Court. He was in 1997 made a permanent judge of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. He also worked as the Chief Justice of the Patna High Court for more than a quarter of a year commencing from December 2006 to May 2010. He then served as the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court and was soon elevated to the Supreme Court in 2011 and became the 45^th Chief Justice of India after J.S. Kehar.

PROMINENT JUDGMENTS

Beginning with, Justice Misra led the 3 judge bench on Nirbhaya Rape case of 2012 in which appeal was filed by the four convicts (namely Akshay Thakur, Pawan Gupta, Vinay Sharma and Mukesh Singh after one of the accused committed suicide in prison by hanging himself and the other being a juvenile was sent to the reform home for 3 years) against their death penalty but the bench upheld the death sentence awarded to the four convicts.

The bench constituting of Justice Misra and Justice Prafulla Pant in 2016 upheld the constitutional validity of Criminal Defamation Law after it was contested Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal, Congress vice-president Rahul Gandhi and Subramaniam Swamy where the criminal defamation law was argued to be in discord with the freedom of speech and expression. The bench upheld the relevant sections 499 and Section 500 of the Indian Penal Code which talk about defamation and the punishment which shall follow the act. The relevance if the judgment becomes vital on the political arena where acts of defamation are quite common under the veil of “good faith” (especially the one against the Delhi CM by Arun Jaitley in this case) and each case spans for years unlike that of the UK where defamation cases are resolved as a speedy process.    

Another instance when the bench constituting Dipak Misra and Amitava Roy refused to entertain the plea of Ashwini Kumar Upadhyay, BJP spokesperson on playing of National Anthem in all courts before the start of the proceedings. This gathered mass attention because earlier in November 2016, playing of National Anthem became mandatory for all cinema halls before the screening of the movie and the audience has to stand to show respect to the motherland which is reflected by the act of respecting the National flag as well as the National anthem. Also, the entry and exit doors will remain closed to avoid any disturbance during the anthem. But in this plea, Justice Misra said that “an order of the Supreme Court should not be stretched and the bar should show some restraint.”

His judgment on banning jallikattu, a bull-taming sport under the garb of culture was also highly criticized by him quoting that the conservation of culture should not result into the infliction of pain and suffering to the animals.

The five-judge bench headed by Justice Dipak Misra on examining the contentious issue of the privacy policy of WhatsApp concluded that the data of the users is an integral part of the Right to Life and personal liberty of citizens under the constitution of India and it comes out with regulations to guard it. If any contractual obligations violate that, it would certainly be followed by ramifications.

Thus, Dipak Misra has already enriched the Indian Judiciary with his value judgments and his term as the Chief Justice of India is expected to further add on to this list.