Prime Minister Narendra Modi “orchestrating and coordinating” an attack on the judiciary in the name of defending it is the “height of hypocrisy”, Congress leader Jairam Ramesh said on Thursday.

The comments came after Modi accused the Opposition party of bullying the judiciary.

“To browbeat and bully others is vintage Congress culture,” Modi said in a social media post on Thursday. “Five decades ago itself they had called for a ‘committed judiciary’ – they shamelessly want commitment from others for their selfish interests but desist from any commitment towards the nation.”

Modi’s post was accompanied by an open letter by a group of lawyers to Chief Justice DY Chandrachud alleging that a “vested interest group” is trying to put pressure on the judiciary and defame courts on the basis of “frivolous logic and stale political agendas”.

Ramesh on Thursday described Modi’s comments as “height of hypocrisy”. “The PM’s brazenness in orchestrating and coordinating an attack on the judiciary, in the name of defending the judiciary, is the height of hypocrisy!” he said in a social media post.

“The Supreme Court has delivered body blows to him in recent weeks,” he said. “The Electoral Bonds Scheme is but one example. The Supreme Court declared them to be unconstitutional – and it is now proved beyond doubt that they were a blatant instrument of fear, blackmail, and intimidation to force companies to donate to the BJP.”

The Rajya Sabha MP said that Modi has given a legal guarantee to corruption instead of a legal guarantee to minimum support price to the farmers.

“All that the prime minister has done in the last ten years is divide, distort, divert, and defame,” he said. “140 crore Indians are waiting to give him a befitting reply very soon.”

The Supreme Court had on February 15 said that the electoral bonds could lead to quid pro quo arrangements between donors and political parties when it struck down the scheme as unconstitutional. The scheme was introduced by the Modi government in 2018.

The court had directed the State Bank of India to issue details of the political parties that received electoral bonds from April 12, 2019, and submit them to the Election Commission.

Analysis of the data released by the State Bank of India has revealed that Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party received the lion’s share of political funding through the scheme.

What did the open letter say?

The open letter by a group of 600 lawyers, which included Senior Advocate Harish Salve and Bar Council of India chairperson Manan Kumar Mishra, alleged that a vested interest group is creating a false narrative of a supposed “better past” and “golden period” of the courts.

The letter did not name any party or critics.

This “vested interest group” has also “concocted an entire theory of ‘bench fixing’ – which is not just disrespectful and contemptuous but an attack on the honour and dignity of our courts”, the letter shared by PTI added.

In recent years, critics have pointed out that certain cases are pulled away from judges critical of the government to hand out a favourable judgement.

The transfer of Justice S Muralidhar from the Delhi High Court to the Punjab and Haryana High Court in February 2020, hours after he rebuked the Delhi Police for its investigation into the communal riots in North East Delhi that month, is cited as a example of this.

“There is a clear ‘My way or the highway’ approach at work – any decision they agree with is hailed but any decision they disagree with is trashed, smeared and disregarded,” the letter added.

The letter comes at a time when the Opposition has accused the Union government of using central agencies to arrest politicians and using stringent laws that deny them bail.

“Their antics are vitiating the atmosphere of trust and harmony, which characterises the functioning of the judiciary,” the letter said. “Their pressure tactics are most obvious in political cases, particularly those involving political figures accused of corruption. These tactics are damaging to our courts and threaten our democratic fabric.”

Also read: