Former Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi on Wednesday launched his autobiography "Justice for the Judge" in which he has spoken about several controversies that took place during his tenure as a judge of the Supreme Court and Chief Justice of India. Justice Gogoi's term as the CJI has given India several important verdicts including the decades-old dispute over the Ayodhya land and the French-made Rafale purchase issue. He has addressed the matter of sexual harassment allegations against him and other controversies for the first time through his book.
Key Points:
1. In his autobiography, Former CJI Gogoi has said about important meetings, intense interactions, and private confrontations that took place when he gave the crucial verdict on the Rafale deal, Sabarimala, NRC, and Ayodhya.
2. CJI Dipak Misra was heading the bench which was initially hearing the Ayodhya case and he has declined to adjourn the hearing to 2019, Justice Gogoi wrote in his autobiography. Although Justice Mishra had tried to head the case, the 2018 impeachment charges against him prevented him from going ahead with the case and many believe it to be a deliberate move to remove Justice Mishra from being on the Ayodhya case, he added.
3. "Whether there is any substance in this is not within my knowledge. However, I find some commonality between such thoughts and the views expressed in certain quarters that the events narrated in an earlier chapter could have been similarly calculated with not only the Ayodhya hearing that was due shortly, but also the ongoing hearings in sensitive cases like Rafale and NRC in mind. The only difference was that while the first move (involving CJI Misra) succeeded, the second (involving myself) did not'" Former CJI Gogoi wrote in his book.
4. "The process of hearing of the Ayodhya case really commenced during the tenure of my predecessor, Justice Misra. This should settle all speculation as to whether I had resurrected the cases to hear them out of turn, as alleged by many. What I did was to let the case take the usual procedural course."
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5. The book also revealed that CJI Dipak Misra used ‘strong-arm tactics’ to complete the appointment of Justice K M Joseph. Justice Gogoi writes in his book: “I have reasons to believe that CJI Misra used strong-arm tactics, i.e. threatened to resign if Justice Joseph was not appointed,”
