New Delhi, Apr 27 (NIE): The government on Thursday cited the earlier Congress regime’s “unfair treatment of the judiciary” to counter the opposition party’s criticism of the BJP-led central government over its decision to ask the Supreme Court to reconsider its recommendation to elevate Justice K M Joseph to the apex court.

“The government is led by Narendra Modi, Rajnath Singh, Sushma Swaraj, Arun Jaitley and Ravi Shankar Prasad and many others who had fought against Emergency and suffered for individual freedom, freedom of media and the independence of judiciary. The Congress should stop lecturing us,” Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said.

“The Congress party’s record of giving unfair treatment and in many ways of unfair treatment of judiciary is well known. The whole record of the Congress is littered with repeated instances of superseding judges who were found to be inconvenient, and censorship,” Prasad said, reacting to the Congress’s attack on the government’s move.

Recalling how Justices J M Shelat, K S Hegde and A N Grover were superseded during Congress rule before the Emergency, the minister said: “The legendary judge Justice H R Khanna, who gave the dissenting judgment in ADM Jabalpur case and upheld the freedom during the Emergency, was denied the position of CJI for two months and superseded by a junior. The real provocation of the imposition of the Emergency was the judgment of Allahabad High Court unseating Indira Gandhi.”

Senior BJP leaders dismissed suggestions that Justice K M Joseph’s name had not been cleared by the government because of his 2016 ruling quashing President’s rule in Congress-ruled Uttarakhand. “It is regrettable to suggest that Justice Joseph is being singled out because of his 2016 ruling. It is a completely infructuous argument for the simple reason that the BJP is in power with two-thirds majority in the state despite that judicial setback,” said a senior BJP leader. “Justice J S Khehar had struck down NJAC, the Narendra Modi government’s prime legislation on judicial accountability, in 2015, but the government did not hold it against him and try to put a spanner in his elevation as Chief Justice of India. It was a judicial decision and the party took it in that spirit,” he added.

Senior BJP leaders, who had watched appointments in the higher judiciary during the UPA regime, claimed how the Congress-led UPA government had segregated Justice C K Prasad’s name from the composite recommendation along with Justices T S Thakur and Swatanter Kumar in 2009. Justice C K Prasad was elevated to the Supreme Court a year later. Likewise, BJP sources claimed that one needs to look at appointments to the high courts in 2012 and 2013 during the UPA regime when the composite recommendations were segregated.