Justice – the quality of being morally just – is the most important quality because it is only through the application of justice that freedom and truth can exist. Justice, for many people, refers to fairness. However, justice means different things to different groups. Thus, when a person or a group of persons feel that justice has been denied, they go to court for judgment – sometimes even when they are not the one that justice has been denied. The courts hear and decide what really happened and what should be done about it. They decide whether a person committed a crime and what the punishment should be. They also provide a peaceful way to decide private disputes that people can’t resolve themselves. Court judgments play a very important role in the working of the judicial system because, apart from passing a verdict, they also act as precedents for cases to come in the future.
The much debated issue of the extension of service of Nagaland DGP recently and the Supreme Court’s hearing of it on Monday is an interesting development. What is even more interesting is that the Supreme Court chastised the Nagaland government for extending the tenure of the Director General of Police (DGP) after his superannuation and ordered the state to put its house in order by recommending to the UPSC a fresh panel of names of eligible IPS officers from the state cadre for the appointment of a new DGP. The Nagaland Law Students’ Federation (NLSF) and others took the matter to the apex court to seek justice. The learned justices of the Supreme Court will deliver justice.
Now, justice as stated above is the quality of being morally just. There can be no justice without being morally just. It is now being made public that the incumbent DGP was present at a meeting of the State Police Establishment Board (SPEB) chaired by the Chief Secretary, which recommended his six-month extension. That is something that is not morally just and the Supreme Court has rightly taken a dim view of it. Even a village level students’ union disapproves of such morally unjust practices!
Apart from that, the SPEB should have known of the Supreme Court’s July 3, 2018 judgment and order which stated that there should be no acting DGP and that the DGP should have a fixed tenure of two years. According to the NLSF lawyer, the previous DGP of the state was removed before the end of his tenure, and the incumbent DGP, a Chhattisgarh cadre officer, was appointed on the grounds that Nagaland does not have IPS officers with 30 years of experience. Quite astoundingly, the incumbent DGP did not have 30 years of experience at the time of his appointment in June of 2018!
The Supreme Court bench on Monday also noted that the Nagaland government recommended five names to the UPSC for appointment to the post of DGP, which was to become vacant on August 31, 2022. The UPSC responded to the proposal with a letter dated April 1, 2022, in which it pointed out several flaws. The Union Ministry of Home Affairs approved the state government’s proposal which sought a six-month extension of service for the incumbent DGP and was granted. However, the court has on Monday stated that the MHA was not given the details of the UPSC letter dated April 1, 2022. Clearly, some people need to get a moral compass.