Separation of powers under Kesavananda Bharati equally binding on Judiciary, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad

The National Law Day Celebrations came to a close at Vigyan Bhavan yesterday. The Valedictory function, which was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra and Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad..Like on Saturday, the Executive did not hold back in its criticism of the judiciary for exceeding its limits in exercise of judicial functions..Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said,.“Governance must be left to those elected by people of India to govern; Law making must be left to those elected by people of India to make laws..The people of India trust the Prime Minister with the obligation to secure the unity and integrity of India. As I once said in the Parliament, the Prime Minister is the one who will press the nuclear button, that is how much the people trust him. Yet the Prime Minister through the Law Minister is not trusted [by the judiciary] to have a fair judge appointed is a question”.He then went to on to state that while he is in agreement with the judgment laid down by the Supreme Court in Kesavananda Bharati, it is equally binding on the judiciary as it is on the executive..“Separation of powers envisaged by Kesavananda Bharati is equally binding on the judiciary as it is on the Executive.”.Interestingly, Prasad also referred to Justice Karnan episode to take a dig at the Collegium system. Referring to the episode wherein a sitting judge had to be sent to jail, Prasad remarked,.“When I went through the records, I found that then Collegium had found him well-versed in all branches of law, turned out he was not well versed in contempt law”.CJI Dipak Misra responded to Prasad’s remarks by stating that the judges are conscious of when to interfere and when not to when PILs and other cases come before them..“The Prime Minister is the repository of constitutional trust. That is the language of the Constituent Assembly and we are not going to add anything. We [judges] also repose the same trust in the Honourable Prime Minister as much as people”.He then went on to cite various recent PILs which the Supreme Court had refused to entertain citing the ground that they were beyond the judicial realm..Misra J. also said that all communications received by the Collegium from the Law Minister are treated with due seriousness..Prime Minister Narendra Modi then gave the valedictory address which brought to close the two days celebrations..On Saturday, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had echoed similar sentiments when he said that judges should not get into executive domain as they are only trained to write judgments and not to perform administrative assignments, or run sports organisations.