Recently, former CJI Ranjan Gogoi was nominated for Rajya sabha membership by President of India. This created a panic among many stakeholders.
The constitution of India is based on doctrine of basic feature as said by Supreme court in kesavananda Bharti case(1973). Separation of power is included in this basic feature doctrine where legislative, executive and judiciary performs their respective functions. Some Judges after retirement want to work and no doubt it is their personal wish to work. But it is not justifiable that they work as a legislative after retirement. This option (of becoming MP) after retirement will create biasness during their tenure as judge.
Ranjan Gogoi has announced several important judgement in favour of NDA government in his tenure. For e.g. Ram Mandir case, Rafale scam etc. Withing few months of retirement his appointment as MP has sparked some theory of his earlier judgements.
Chief election commissioner is not allowed to hold any post in state and central government after his retirement. This was mentioned in constitution by constituent assembly in order to keep this post unbiased towards any institution. However constituent assembly did not thought about the work of chief justice of India after retirement as nothing is mentioned about this in constitution.
Our former Finance minister late Arun Jaitley said to amend the constitution to define the work of CJI post retirement in order to keep this post unbiased. However this has not surfaced at ground level yet. Extending the tenure or increasing the age limit can also be some options to be looked upon as a measure to cater this issue. The time has come that parliament should think about this matter otherwise it will hurt “separation of Power” concept in our constitution in future.
amit kumar 