Former judge of Madras high court slams CAA

KOCHI: Justice K Chandru, a former judge of Madras high court, has come out strongly against the Citizenship Amendment Act.
Justice Chandru posed a question to the Union government: “Do you want to make this country an open jail?”
He posed this query while delivering a lecture at the thirteenth National Conference of All India Lawyers Union held in Kochi on Friday.
Justice Chandru was referring to the ongoing countrywide protests against the Act and National Register of Citizens (NRC).He said that the protests have become a twenty-twenty match between Prime Minister Narendra Modi–home minister Amit Shah and the people of the country.
He said that the country was being divided by BJP and RSS on the ground of religion. According to him, though the Prime Minister was denying the existence of any detention camp in the country, it was being widely reported in the media that a multi-storied detention camp was being constructed in a football ground-like area in Assam.
Justice Chandru also took strong exception to the judgment of the Supreme Court in Ayodhya case.
According to him, though the Ayodhya case was a case of title dispute, which had to be decided on the basis of documents, the Supreme Court chose it to decide on the grounds of faith. He also took strong exception to the manner in which the SC refused to review Ayodhya judgment whereas it chose to leave open the question of review of Sabarimala judgment, which decided that the Constitution was supreme.
Justice Kurian Joseph, delivering the inaugural address of the seminar on the topic ‘Challenges faced by the Indian Constitution in the Present Era’, said that all the constitutional institutions in the country were facing a credibility crisis like never before.