‘Judges Must Inculcate Democratic Processes & Should Not Behave Like A King’: Chief Justice Talapatra Bids Adieu To Orissa High Court

The Orissa High Court yesterday bid farewell to its 33^rd Chief Justice Subhasis Talapatra upon his superannuation. He took over the charge on August 8, 2023 consequent upon the retirement of the then Chief Justice Dr. S. Muralidhar. He had one of the shortest tenures as the Chief Justice which spanned for merely 56 days.

A Full Court Reference was called by the High Court in respect of the outgoing Chief Justice which was attended by all the Judges of the High Court, Registrars, Advocate General, Deputy Solicitor General, President of the High Court Bar Association and lawyers.

While addressing the gathering, at the outset, Justice Talapatra extended heartfelt gratitude to his personal as well as secretarial staff for whom he could work comfortably during his stint at Cuttack.

Speaking about judiciary as well as role of Judges, he said it is a very complex business, which is called as ‘business of judging’. Because a Judge is a human being and at the same time, he is judging something. He further said that people must acknowledge that Judges are also the products of societies, families and parenthoods.

“It carries certain prejudices, some ideas about various profiles in social life. So, the moment he (a Judge) comes to a problem, to a legal issue to be settled, first he has to combat those ideas and he has to test the ideas whether those are constitutionally valid or not,” he added.

Justice Talapatra referred to the speech of Dr. BR Ambedkar delivered in the Constituent Assembly on November 26, 1949 and said,

“Dr. Ambedkar said that we have done our job. We have given the country a Constitution. But at the same time, we are very anxious that whether our future will accept that concept or idea of the country which the Constitution visualises.”

He said that working of the Constitution for the last seven decades shows that every word of Dr. Ambedkar was true and we are facing serious challenge to the constitutionalism and constitutional values. He said that we must give some thought for protecting the constitutionalism in this country.

The Chief Justice highlighted a peculiar difficulty faced by Judges of High Court. In some judgments, certain ideas are coming which are not ingrained in our constitutional philosophy. He said a Judge has the duty to uphold the Constitution but at time, some external ideas come to the Court rooms or percolate to the High Court level through the superior Court (Supreme Court).

“In my career, I have expressly written my dissent against seven Supreme Court judgments stating that under Article 141 (of the Constitution) this may be binding but these ideas cannot be accepted through the prism of constitutional philosophy. I am very fortunate, out of those (seven) judgments, five judgments have already been reversed. I believe in future two other judgments will also be reversed,” he added.

Justice Talapatra said that he always considered himself unfit to be a Judge because a single individual can hardly ever master the amount of philosophy, knowledge and skills required to be a Judge. But still, he said, the Judges manage these lacunae though the knowledge of lawyers.

“But then the question is how do we manage. We do manage through your (the lawyers) knowledge… Your knowledge is getting transferred into our souls and reasoning process… (and) we find out legal solutions to the problems that are pressed before us.”

He said as a Judge, he has always recognised the boundaries of the State. Even in Public Interest Litigations (PIL), when he decided subjects of controversies, he reminded the authorities of their duties. If even after the reminder of the Court, the authorities do not comply with their obligations, he said, it is to be dealt with by the electorates of the democracy and not by the Courts.

The outgoing Chief Justice urged the Judges to exercise restraint and not to act as ‘Kings’. While calling upon all the Judges to adapt democratic principles, he said:

“As a Judge in a democracy, it is most important thing that we inculcate in ourselves democratic processes… we should not behave like a ‘king’… the powers in some areas are very discretionary in the hands of the Judges and that is why an extra mind we have to awake to remind everyday that you are a Judge in a democracy, you are not a king…”

Justice Talapatra was born on October 4, 1961 at Udaipur, Tripura. He did his graduation in Arts and Law from University of Calcutta and was enrolled with the Bar Council of Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram and Arunachal Pradesh on September 12, 1990.

He practiced mainly at Agartala Bench of the Gauhati High Court and appeared in various constitutional, civil and criminal matters. Later, he was designated as a Senior Advocate on December 21, 2004.

He took oath as an Additional Judge of the Gauhati High Court on November 15, 2011 and was appointed as a Permanent Judge of the Tripura High Court on September 13, 2013. He served as the Acting Chief Justice of the Court twice, i.e. from 02.11.2018 to 13.11.2018 and again from 11.11.2019 to 15.11.2019.

He was transferred to the Orissa High Court on June 1, 2022 and took oath of office on June 10, 2022. He has delivered some notable judgments during his tenure at the Orissa High Court. He recently headed a Division Bench which directed the Odisha Government to form a High Level Committee for preparing inventory of Puri Jagannath Temple’s Ratna Bhandar..

Last month, his Bench had warned and gave last chance to the Union and State Governments to comply with Section 19(b) of the Sexual Harassment of Women and Workplace (Prevention, Prohibition and Redressal) Act, 2013 which requires all the employers to display the penal consequences of sexual harassments; and the order constituting the Internal Committee constituted under Section 4(1).

In August, one of his decisions hit the headlines when his Bench directed the Cuttack Municipal Corporation to relocate all the stray dogs from the campus of National Law University, Odisha within 24 hours. The direction came in a PIL matter, which was filed by the University as a student having cerebral palsy was attacked by the stray dogs multiples times inside its campus.