I would not have apologised just to escape contempt, Senior Advocate Yatin Oza (Part I)

Yatin Oza, a Senior Advocate of the Gujarat High Court was recently exonerated by the Supreme Court on contempt charges after the letters he sent to Chief Justice of India TS Thakur. Yatin Oza had criticised High Court judges MR Shah and KS Jhaveri JJ. as “owing allegiance to 11, Akbar Road and 7, Race Course Road” and made other adverse comments against the High Court..A couple of weeks later, Yatin Oza met with Bar & Bench’s Aditya AK to discuss the issue of transparency in judicial appointments, his career as a lawyer and politician, his relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and more..In the first of this two-part interview, we take a look at Yatin Oza, the lawyer..After an hour-long conversation with Yatin Oza, he will have you eating out of his hand. Perhaps it is the conviction with which he expresses his views. Perhaps it is one-liners like,.“My friends sitting in Delhi will be looking at every word, to file another contempt petition. That is up to them, I wish them all the best.”.That is just the kind of person he is. You don’t become President of the High Court’s bar association sixteen times for no reason. But what is it about him that prompts people to see him as a leader? And what drove him to make the comments on the Gujarat High Court? To find out, we start at the beginning..In his youth, Yatin Oza was hell bent on joining the army. In fact, he was selected as a Lieutenant at the age of twenty-one. However, he was persuaded to join the legal profession instead. The fact that his father, the late NR Oza, was one of Gujarat’s finest ever advocates probably had something to do with that..“The help that my father gave to me in the profession was very, very limited. On the first day of my practice, he gave me a one-room, well-furnished office. That was the day I got my sanad. He told me that I would have an independent practice, that my accounts would be independent and that I would have my own clerk. .He asked me never to engage him as a senior. At the same time, he asked his clients not to engage me as a junior. He said, ‘If you fall short of funds, feel free to ask. But I hope and trust that you do not fall short’..And God was so bountifully kind to me that during the first few days of July 1982, when I started practice, I had fourteen matters in twelve days. For the first 5-7 years, my filings never went below 50-60 matters a month.”.There was no looking back since then. Soon, he would be offered a Senior designation. At the age of 35..“Until 1995, that system did not exist in Gujarat. When Justice Kirpal was Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court, he saw that were only four or five designated seniors in Gujarat; my father was one of them. He felt that in order for the practice to develop, there should be a good number of seniors. He called several lawyers and put their names forth to the Full Court for designation..When I was first called, I was only 35. It was hard for me to leave my practice and expect to be engaged, so I declined. So it was kept in abeyance with a note from Justice Kirpal that it be reconsidered at a later point in time. In 1998, Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan must have come across that note and called me again. And this time I accepted, at the age of 39.”.Having practiced for 34 years at the High Court, he has seen it all. He reminisces of a time when a familial atmosphere prevailed at the Gujarat Bar..“When I joined in 1982, the Bar was like a family. It was a small Bar; the lawyers were very attached to each other. If somebody was not seen for two days, enquiries would be made. We had a very ordinary canteen, where litigants and advocates sat together..The judges were also very affectionate. They really wanted to groom the Bar. There were great judges with exceptional qualities, like MP Thakker, PD Desai BK Mehta, AM Ahmadi, SP Mazumdar and many more. They were extremely keen to see that the Bar and the Bench were synchronised like two wheels on either side of a chariot. The mutual trust and confidence between the two was amazing.”.But, according to him, things have changed for the worse..“Around the early 2000s, the faith and confidence in each other got shaken. Some judges used to view the Bar with suspicion. They carried the feeling that someone was trying to take advantage of them. From 2004 onwards till date, we saw a stage where the Bar and the Bench couldn’t see eye to eye. I do not know what the reason for this is. The distance that you find between the two today in the Gujarat High Court, you will not find anywhere else in the country.”.This apparent schism drove him to write to the Chief Justice of India. The allegations in his infamous letters, he says, have been brought up in the public domain before. Even by a sitting acting Chief Justice of the High Court..“During the hearing of a PIL, former acting Chief Justice VM Sahai had said that he did not want to open his mouth about a scandal worth Rs 3 crore and the direct involvement of a judge in that. This would have caught fire long before, but for the fact that the third judge in the committee is one whose honesty and uprightness is impossible to question. So before my letters became public, it was spoken about by a Chief Justice sitting on the dais.”.So did the scandal have anything to do with the recent transfer of Justice Jhaveri to the Rajasthan High Court?.“How do I tell you [about] how the Supreme Court collegium functions? Their minutes are so confidential that it is impossible to know, unless Times of India or Bar & Bench can find out! But five minds of the senior-most judges have worked together and formed an opinion.”.Despite this, he believes that the collegium system is the way to go..“The reason is that sometimes, when things come out in public domain, it harms the institution. More so, because these days the government is hell bent on undertaking frontal attacks on the judiciary. But I frankly believe that under certain circumstances, you should disclose the reasons.”.One of those circumstances was in 2009, when certain names from the Gujarat High Court were sent to the Supreme Court collegium. Due to political interference, however, some names were not considered..“On an absolutely absurd ground that weighed on their minds, the Central government objected to our present Bar President, Asim Pandya because he was a partner of Vijay Patel, who is a BJP MP and MLA. Another advocate of outstanding merit, Mehul Rathod was rejected because he was friends with Justice Jhaveri. How can you keep such nonsensical criteria in mind? But then again, governments are bound to do these things..These objections were sent to the collegium. Having considered all of these with respect to every individual, they recommended all twelve names, with the understanding that two of the judges who would be appointed would move out of Gujarat..Then, the same objections were sent again to the collegium, without adding anything. I know this because I have seen the files myself. This time, the collegium agreed not to appoint four or five people. This is beyond comprehension. Now, the question as to how I got access to the files is not relevant. If I am wrong, prosecute me. How do you leave out four or five lawyers of outstanding merit on the same objections?”.He has always been vocal about issues in the higher judiciary of his home state. Sometimes, at the cost of contempt. Though he stands by most of the content in his letters to the CJI, he agrees that the last paragraph, in which he describes the High Court as the “High Court of the Government of Gujarat”, was a mistake..He recounts how stalwarts like Kapil Sibal, Abhishek Manu Singhvi and Harish Salve helped him in the Supreme Court..“Mr. Sibal, Mr. Singhvi, Mr. Salve all stood with me like a rock. Mr. Salve was not in court because he was held up in a Constitution bench matter, but he drafted my affidavit. Now, he normally never drafts, but he did so for me. All my life, I will be indebted to them. The force, the love and the commitment with which they stood by me, at great cost. Mr. Singhvi and Mr. Sibal sat in the court from 10:30, leaving aside their other work. They also felt that what I wrote in the last paragraph is bad.”.Every now and then, he will look you in the eye and insert a dramatic pause between sentences. Political histrionics aside, there is no denying the fact that this man truly cares about the welfare of the judiciary. Even though he sometimes tends to exhibit tough love..“I regret that I let my heart overpower my mind. It should be the other way around. With that last para, I did a disservice to the Bar. It is very clear that my apology is only for the last para, because in that, I dragged the whole institution, which I should not have. I would not have apologised just to get out of the clutches of contempt. I would rather go to jail..I wrote these things against an institution that has given me so much. So I asked myself why I did that. I felt that I did injustice to the cause for which I was fighting.”.In the second part of the interview, Yatin Oza speaks about his political career and his relationship with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.