Newsmaker: K G Balakrishnan

Equal before law

The appointment of Konakuppakattil Gopinathan Balakrishnan as the first Dalit Chief Justice of India has come in a year marked by high voltage debates and sharply divided opinion expressed on the need for reservations for the socially backward, be it OBCs, SC/ST or minorities.

The absence of Dalits in the higher judiciary was frequently flagged during fiery debates triggered by the decision to provide 27 per cent reservation to OBCs in higher education.

Dalit organisations charge that barring two Dalit judges in the apex court, the entry of judges from that section of society has been nil. In fact, the media reportage on the first Dalit chief justice has been criticised by many for overemphasising his Dalit identity.

The argument being that this would deepen the caste divide. The opposing view is that the event has gone unreported and amounts to surreptitious discrimination against Dalits.

Be that as it may, the achievements of the new chief justice designate calls for as elaborate a description as his caste identity. Balakrishnan himself play downs the issue of Dalit presence in the judiciary.

He chooses to emphasise his accomplishments as a judge rather than his caste identity and merely says that his appointment would "give an impetus to the process of equality".

In the past, several of his rulings have had far reaching effects on society. It was Justice Balakrishnan as chief justice of the Kerala High Court who pronounced the controversial judgment asking the Election Commission to debar political parties which impose strikes on the public.

"Forcible strikes by political parties have a bad effect on common people. You can see how patients, passengers and children suffer during strikes," Justice Balakrishnan said in his ruling.

Balakrishnan is from the Kottayam district, the very place in Kerala which gave the country its first ever Dalit President, K R Narayanan.

He is the second of the eight children of K J Gopinathan who was a retired clerk from Kerala Judicial Services and was the first in the family to complete matriculation. Balakrishnan's mother had her schooling up to class seven.

After his primary education from the government lower primary school in Kaduthuruthy, Balakrishanan went ot Ernakulam for the rest of his education, doing an LLM from Government Law College with a first rank.

He practiced as an advocate for some time till he joined the judicial services in 1973 as a munsif. Later, he returned to the bar and a year later, on September 26, 1985, he was persuaded to become a judge of Kerala High Court.

From Kerala High Court, he went to Gujarat High Court as a judge and became its chief justice on July 16, 1998. He was transferred as chief justice of Madras High Court on September 9,1999, and finally appointed as judge of the Supreme Court in 2000.

As chief justice, Balakrishnan will have a three-year term "" which in itself is a break from the past. In the recent past, most Chief Justices of India have served for much shorter periods.

It is hard to say if the apex court will acquire a different profile under his leadership but he himself has given an indication of how he wants the Supreme Court to function. In an interview, he said that there would be no confrontations between the Legislature and the Judiciary.