<b>Letters:</b> Judicial overreach

This refers to the editorial "A double-edged sword" (February 19). Recent interventions of the Indian judiciary in the spheres of legislature and executive border on bizarre to outright bunkum. The judiciary has intervened to question a "mysterious car" racing down the Tughlaq Road in Delhi, allotment of a particular bungalow to a judge, stray cattle on streets, levying congestion charges at peak hours at airports with heavy traffic, prescribing age and other criteria for nursery admissions, supply of drinking water in schools, use and misuse of ambulances, requirements for establishing a world-class burns ward in hospital, the use of subways, identifying buildings to be demolished, growing frequency of road accidents and enhancing of road fines, and so on. The eccentric lust of the Indian judiciary in its misguided zeal to govern through judicial gavel does not stop here. It ordered linking of rivers - a mammoth and irreversible task - without any scientific opinion and concern for environment and ecological consequences, leave aside budgetary constraints and priorities of the government. It halted commercialisation of genetically modified crops, and threw spanner in commissioning of nuclear plants. To ease congestion at Delhi-Gurgaon expressway, it ordered the abolition of toll. And when Parliament (normally an executive action would suffice) approved the foreign direct investment policy in retail, it questioned the economic rationale of the policy.

Such interventions in matters that legitimately belong to other branches of the state have disturbed the constitutional equilibrium. Usurpation of executive and legislative functions in the disguise of interpretation is naked abuse of judicial powers.

K D Singh New Delhi

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