Three cheers to the Supreme Court of India for re-instating Prof. Venugopal as AIIMS Director. If you are unaware of the issue, the Central Government had, about 6 months back, terminated Dr. Venugopal's tenure unceremoniously with a Parliamentary Act. With the first hand information that I happen to have in this case, I agree with the reports claiming that all the reasons cited by the Govt. (read as 'The Health Minister'), were lame and that the real issue was just some personal differences between our Health Minister and the AIIMS Director. Should our premier institutions run on personal whims of our politicos? Is the primary duty of AIIMS/IIMs/IITs etc to serve the ego of their so-called man in the cabinet?
Dr. Venugopal, an internationally acclaimed surgeon, performed first successful heart transplant in India. He enjoys a great rapport among the students and the faculty. Students think he voices their interests and concerns up to the Govt. The whole community, including the students and a majority of the doctors, were very disappointed with the outrageous sacking of their favorite director. They tried to oppose, wrote letters, did strikes, but all the resistance was astutely crushed.
Anyways, the Supreme Court's judgement brought a welcome respite in AIIMS' life. They are very excited about having their mentor back (their wikipedia entry on AIIMS was updated the same day to celebrate Venugopal's homecoming) and their morale is high (which is very important in a doctor's case. You can't risk your doctor's anger :-) Can you? ).
Wow, its fun to be judgemental :-)
Before I end, I am unable to ignore the Supreme Court's role not just in this case but in the larger context of Indian Democracy. If I am not wrong there have been number of times when the Supreme Court came out pro-actively, thrashed the executive, and took decisions which were seen as correct for a 'progressive' India. Of course, here, my definition of progressive would be influenced by what my text books or what the media taught me about how the progressive India should be. So, instead of labeling those decisions as correct or incorrect, lets say that they at least changed the course of the nation. For good or for bad ?, thats another debate. One of these was the land reforms on the Zamindari system, another is the AIIMS one and may be several others. What surprises me is the fact that how come Supreme Court is able to take such tough decisions against the incumbent govt, when the Govt. has a role in the appointment of Supreme Court's judges (i think thats what those civics textbooks used to say). Hmm... I guess it would be a good study to pick some of these landmark judgements, check out the composition of the bench which took those decisions and research on how those judges were appointed to the Supreme Court. I shall keep it for my next post.
3 comments:
Some insightful comments from my sis who & her friends were lot more closer to the happenings than me.
"hmmmm thats gud... guess u cud add that just a day after venugopal was reinstated, he actually went back to wat he does best, repairing hearts!!! he repaired a defect in a little pakistani child's heart just next day after coming back... btw u know its very clear by the number of pakistanis who actually come to our OPDs daily that people from across the border actually trust india and the relations arent bad at all at the level of the citizens of the two countries...
it might be true that only venugopal cud hv managed a comeback like this coz he himself is a powerful man, he even must be hving sum political backing who knows... coz there must be many such govt officials facing similar unceremonial exits from work frustrated with the entire system, but no supreme court wud act on their plea at least not so fast.."
A very good follow up top this post would be this article:
http://www.indianexpress.com/story/310376.html
Summary : The Supreme Court today declined to entertain a public interest litigation seeking directions to make it necessary for judges of all high courts as well as the apex court to disclose information about their wealth and assets if it was sought under the Right to Information Act.
@batra
yah i m surprised. it will interesting to hear the specific arguments given by the judge while pinning off this petition. Such abuse of power by Supreme Court has been in the past as well. One major one was the 1984 emergency when the habeas corpus was suspended.
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