Unsealed Covers review: How Indian courts have betrayed its people

Bhatia, a lawyer and an author, has been writing about the judiciary and its functioning on his blog, the Indian Constitutional Law and Philosophy (ICLP), since 2013. He has even featured writings of several other guest writers as well. This book, however, contains only his pieces from the blog — published between 2013 and 2022 — and has tried to cover a wide range of issues surrounding the Indian judiciary. The book is divided into three parts: Rights, Constitutional Structure, and The Judiciary, with each of them further divided into different chapters exploring the diverse issues around them.

Under each part, the author has underlined several pressing issues that the courts have covered in that particular area. For example, under Rights, one of the most fundamental responsibilities of a constitutional court is to specifically safeguard those basic human rights of all. Bhatia talks about several bail orders passed by the different high courts of the country for the accused who were put behind bars for a long period of time under the draconian Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act or UAPA without any charge sheet being filed against them. He talks about both the scenarios where the courts passed reasonable orders, upholding the rights of those languishing in jails without any justifications from the state as well as cases where they failed miserably.

Suspension of people’s rights

The following chapter digs deeper into some notable judgments, like the Right to Privacy, Section 377, Sabarimala, Aadhaar, etc. and focuses on the jurisprudence that these helped to develop. Under the same chapter, the author also covers matters around reservations, illegal demolitions of homes, refugee rights, Article 370, among certain other cases. The other two parts encompass matters like the anti-defection cases of Madhya Pradesh and Karnataka, the controversy around the master of roster and summaries of the tenure of several CJIs.

Since the blogs have been written with a clear intention of making law accessible to all, it helps the reader to grasp even the most complicated legal proceedings with ease. These views can be termed as subjective but the clarity he provides regarding laws and what the constitution says about different subjects allows the reader to make their own judgment. There seems to be a clear rationale to compile these essays, that is to make a distinction between a constitutional court and an executive court.

Under democracy the three pillars have their own distinct duties and hence whenever any one of them starts to favour the other, keeping the precedents at bay, then they inadvertently disturb the established power balance. Who can forget the infamous ADM Jabalpur case where the Supreme Court deliberately gave up on its duties as a constitutional court? Incidents like these remain etched on the memory of a republic. While the country hasn’t seen another declared emergency yet, this book reveals that there have been several instances where rights of various individuals and activists have been suspended by the state without any clarification and how the courts failed them, turning themselves into executive courts.

What recourse do we have if the judiciary fails?

Apart from the aforementioned issues, the book also discusses cases where the courts celebrated the freedoms that the Constitution bestows upon its people. Whether it’s the right to privacy judgment where a nine-judge bench declared that this right is indeed a fundamental right and subsequently it also paved way for several other guarantees for the general populace. Following this, the Navtej Johar judgment read down the discriminative parts of Section 377 which targeted the LGBTQIA+ community. And then came the Sabarimala judgment which upheld the right of women of all ages to enter the temple fighting differential dogmas with all its might.

But then there are cases which point towards the degrading socio-political reality of our country, whether it’s the bulldozer justice system which mainly targets the Muslim community where the government itself chooses to be the judge, jury and executioner of someone’s guilt and demolishes their houses. In cases like these, the response from the High courts as well as the Supreme Court has been disappointing.

Sadly, there are also occurrences where the courts competed with the executive to be more authoritative than them. The National Register of Citizens (NRC) case and the Rohingya Deportation case are two such dark moments in the past decade where the Supreme Court gave directions which stripped away the basic human rights of many. While the former aimed at creating foreigners from people living in the country and disenfranchising them, the latter targeted the very existence of refugees and pushed them towards a state ever so ready to take their lives.

This book comes at a time when the case of abrogation of Article 370 is being heard at the Supreme Court while another judgment around marriage equality awaits at their altar, making it the perfect read of contemporary times. It is books like these which help the people to understand what’s happening all around us, especially in the legal fraternity, which is quite exclusive to begin with. In contemporary times, when the executive is testing its ability to inflate its constitutional limits through convoluted means, we as citizens, turn towards the judiciary to protect our freedoms, but what recourse do we have left if they fail to do so?

It is because of this specific reason why it is necessary to keep a critical view of what kind of jurisprudence is being set by the courts. Bhatia’s Unsealed Covers will help general people make sense of otherwise complicated legal proceedings.