SC told to respect boundaries |
The legislature, the executive, and the judiciary should respect “boundaries” laid out in the Constitution and work together to strengthen Indian democracy. This comment by Prime Minister Narendra Modi may again get people talking about the executive and the judiciary disagreeing over crucial issues. Modi`s comment comes at a time when the government and the judiciary are locked in a long-running debate over so-called judicial activism. The Supreme Court recently ruled individual privacy is a “guaranteed fundamental right”, a verdict that could test the validity of Aadhaar, the controversial biometric identification project the government has been pushing but critics have opposed as intrusive. The government had argued citizens have a right to privacy but it is not an absolute right. 2. The SC and the government have been at loggerheads over how to appoint judges. In 2015, the court struck down a law the government brought--the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act--to end a more than 20-year-old practice of judges appointing judges under a collegium system. The court asked the government to draft a so-called new Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) to lay down guidelines for appointments to the higher judiciary in consultation with the chief justice of India and the collegium.
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