National
Call to review contempt of court law
By J. Venkatesan
NEW DELHI, DEC. 6. Eminent lawyer and Rajya Sabha MP, Mr. Fali S. Nariman, has called for a review of Contempt of Court Act as the courts had the tendency to use the power for punishing persons for scandalising the court much too frequently.
He said the unlimited powers of judges under the contempt law ``needs to be cautioned'' as it had been stretched too far - ``it is time it was reined in by the judges themselves''. He said that the contempt jurisdiction ``is mercurial, unpredictable and capable of being exercised differently in different cases by different judges in the same court''.
Stating that the current law was certainly not ideal, Mr. Nariman in a recent lecture said that ``truth and good faith must be reinstated as valid defences in the power to punish for contempt because they are vital for the future administration of justice''.
In view of the vagueness of the contours of contempt jurisdiction, the power to punish for scandalising the court or the administration of justice must never be invoked by a single judge or even a Bench of two judges. It must always be exercised by a Bench of five Judges both in the High Court and the Supreme Court.
He was also of the view that the power to punish for contempt should never be conferred on commissions of tribunals even if they were manned by retired judges of the highest court.
``Till the law is altered, we must cope with it,'' Mr. Nariman said and asked the judges not to use the power of contempt to ``discipline either the lawyer or the Press as this creates conflict which could be avoided''.
He noted that lawyers and the media were content to accept constraints imposed by the `rule of law', but in the name of contempt they were not prepared to accept ad hoc rules imposed according to the whims, vagaries and idiosyncrasies of individual judges.
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