Being a successful lawyer and politician is, apparently, more about a tightrope walking than great skills at multi-tasking. Being a lawyer in the court, and a politician outside is very difficult. So said some of the country's top lawyer-politicians on the dais at the launch of a book titled Courting Politics.
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Chief guest Justice A.K. Sekri of the Supreme Court agreed that with the increasing role of Supreme Court and the fact that many cases “have the flavour of politics”, it is indeed a tightrope walking. But judges have to decide. Quoting an Israeli judge, he said the judges had to bridge the gap between law and society, and to uphold the rule of the law, no matter how politically coloured a case was.
The author, Shweta Bansal, a lawyer who cleared the civil services and knocked at the doors of justice to take her place in the coveted Indian Foreign Service despite her locomotor disabilities,has featured nine such lawyer politicians, seven of who attended the event.
In fact, six of the nine, have been union ministers. Shweta has written about such dilemma of Finance Minister Arun Jaitely and his predecessor P. Chidambaram, Kapil Sibal, Salman Khurshid, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, Muzaffar Baig, Shanti Bhushan and Ram Jethmalani. Jaitely and Chidambaram could not attend the event.
Congress spokesperson Abishek Manu Singhvi thought multitasking was both a bane and a joy, but considering that many of his colleagues who did this joined the cabinet, he was left as “an eligible non-appointee”. Such law practice and successful politics are “both jealous mistresses”, he quipped. Talking of the challenges in representing clients across party lines, he said while there is no BJP law and Congress law, now a days people from both parties are willing to “paint you black” for representing clients from across the party divide. “Till a few years ago, I have represented clients from the BJP”, he said, adding the dilemma will continue until parties realise that the client's ideology does not become that of the lawyer representing him.
Union Law Minister Ravi Shanker Prasad agreed it was a tightrope walk, with the party, Parliament and the profession coming into play. Often, there are clear political questions that come up in the courts. “Perceptions rule in public life. If the party feels why Ravi Shanker Prasad should take up this case, the party is fully within its rights. The party comes first”.
Former union minister Kapil Sibal who had represented Maqbool Bhatt, a Kashmiri separatist and co-founder of the JKLF, confessed: “I shudder to think of what would happen if it had been in these days.” Other lawyers make allegations against those who do this. “They don't realise you are not a Congress lawyer or a BJP lawyer, but just a professional lawyer.” Equally, while law was static, society is on the move. So inside the court, the lawyer-politician protects the law—the status quo, and in Parliament, he pleads for the aspirations of society, posing a huge dilemma.
Sibal gave the example on the triple talaq case, wherein they were dealing with a personal law—as against a statutory law—at a time when sections of society wants to move on.
Former minister Salman Khurshid pointed out the irony of how political parties and politicians at the ground level feel about lawyers. “In politics, people think they should fight it out on the streets and get justice. They feel that going to the courts and filing a writ is a very sissy way of getting justice”
Lawyer Shanti Bhushan, who was the law minister in the Janata Party government post the emergency, pointed out that electoral reforms did not suit political parties. “If our government had lasted its full term, the face of political funding would have changed in the country,” he said, as he referred to a committee that had been formed by the then government. Political parties equally do not want a Lokpal law, the veteran said.
Former minister and 94-year-old criminal lawyer, Ram Jethmalani expressed his anguish that despite so many lawyers in government, “not a single promise made by political parties and leaders has been fulfilled”.
