Justice Pardiwala's anti-quota remark expunged in 2015

NEW DELHI: The age-old saying that a human being's life moves in a cycle is strangely true for judges of constitutional courts, especially for Justice J B Pardiwala who became a judge of Gujarat HC in Feb 2011 and was fast-tracked to Supreme Court in May 2022.

No one other than Justice Pardiwala can better explain the complications that entail when a constitutional court judge sidetracks the issue before him and makes observations not germane to the pleadings before courts of record - SC and HCs.

Unfortunately, Justice Pardiwala did not fall back on his own experience while dictating the order on Aug 4 making harsh comments about the competence of an Allahabad HC judge in criminal matters, and worse barring him from touching criminal cases for adjudication for his entire tenure as an HC judge.

CJI B R Gavai's intervention and the graciousness of Justices Pardiwala and R Mahadevan to expunge the remarks against the HC judge may have helped salvage the HC judge's stature, but he may have to live with the memory of the odium.

Interestingly in Dec 2015, Justice Pardiwala, as a Gujarat HC judge, while refusing to quash sedition charges against Patidar Anamat Andolan Samiti convener Hardik Patel, had drifted away from the criminal case before him to make sweeping anti-reservation comments.

In his judgment, he had said, "If I am asked by anyone to name two things, which has destroyed this country or rather, has not allowed the country to progress in the right direction, then the same is - reservation and corruption. It is very shameful for any citizen of this country to ask for reservation after 65 years of independence. When our Constitution was framed, it was understood that reservation would remain for a period of 10 years but unfortunately it has continued even after 65 years of independence. The biggest threat, today, for the country is corruption."

Saying that reservations have caused social divisiveness, Justice Pardiwala had observed, "The parody of the situation is that India must be the only country wherein some of the citizens crave to be called backward."

This anti-quota remark in a judgment incensed many political leaders and 58 Rajya Sabha MPs moved a notice for initiation of his removal from judgeship. Within a few hours of the motion being filed by the MPs, the Gujarat govt came to Justice Pardiwala's rescue by moving an application requesting the judge to expunge the 'offensive' remarks.

Justice Pardiwala acted swiftly and expunged the entire paragraph 62 from his judgment. He directed the HC registry to issue a fresh certified copy of the judgment sans Paragraph 62 which had contained the controversial anti-quota observation.