A Tribute to Justice Krishna Iyer

Author: Anjana Srinivasan, (2nd Year student of IIT Kharagpur Law School)

Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer has been hailed as the “judicial conscience of India” and credited with the responsibility of “humanizing law in India”. He was a ceaseless crusader of human rights and had a passion for compassion. He was a rare combination of a legislator, a minster and a judge.

Justice Krishna Iyer was born on November 15, 1915 to a leading criminal lawyer V.V. Rama Ayyar in Thalassery. He had his education at the Basel Mission School, Thalassery, Victoria College, Palakkad, Annamalai University and Madras Law College. He started legal practice in 1937 under his father in the Thalassery and appeared for workers and peasants in several agrarian struggle-related cases in his early years of practice.He became a member of the Madras Legislative Assembly in 1952. After the 1957 Kerala Assembly Elections, when the first Communist government in Kerala headed by E.M.S. Namboodiripad came to power, he held portfolios such as law, justice, home, irrigation, power, prisons, social welfare and inland navigation in the. He passed several pieces of people-oriented legislations during his tenure as a minister. He resumed his legal practice in August 1959 and continued the legal profession after he lost the 1965 Assembly election. He was appointed a judge of the Kerala High Court on July 2, 1968. He served as a Member of the Law Commission from 1971 to 1973.He was elevated as Judge of the Supreme Court on July 17, 1973, and retired on November, 14, 1980.

Justice Krishna Iyer’s has delivered landmark judgments during his tenure as a judge.His judgments are considered to be a thesis on the subject. His judgments have a human touch and are presented in an artistic manner. Let us have a look at some of his judgments that have created history and revolutionized the legal world.

He threw open the doors of the judiciary to every person of the country by emphasizing on the need for relaxing the rule of locus standi, in the case of Fertilizer Corporation Kamgar v. Union of India.

In Sunil Batra v. Delhi Administration, he declared the practice of keeping undertrials with convicts in jail as inhumane, which earned him the title of “Father of prison jurisprudence”.

In the case of Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India case, Justice Iyer noted, “Personal liberty makes for the worth of the human person. Travel makes liberty worthwhile.” He expanded the scope of Article 21 to include the liberty to travel.

The jurisprudence of bail was humanized by Justice Iyer, which has been a lasting contribution to the liberation of under trial prisoners. In G Narasimhulu judgment, he observed, “It makes sense to assume that a man on bail has a better chance to prepare or present his case than one rendered to custody. And if public justice is to be promoted, mechanical detention should be demoted."

By interpreting Article 21 of the Indian Constitution Justice Iyer’s Bench directed the State to provide free legal services to an accused person in custody. He profoundly contributed to prison jurisprudence and humanisation of the sentencing system in India.

His greatest contribution to our constitutional jurisprudence is his landmark judgment in Samsher Singh. In whether the President or Governor have independent power than the Cabinet Justice Krishna Iyer observed, "the President, like the King, has not merely been constitutionally romanticized but actually vested with a pervasive and persuasive role…he is not rival center of power in any sense…the President and Governor shall exercise their formal constitutional powers only upon and in accordance with the advice of their Ministers save in a few well-known exceptional situations like (a) the choice of Prime Minister (Chief Minister), restricted though this choice is by the paramount consideration that he should command a majority in the House; (b) the dismissal of a Government which has lost its majority in the House but refuses to quit office; (c) the dissolution of the House where an appeal to the country is necessitous."

Summing up in the words of Shri Soli J. Sorabjee, a former Attorney General of India:

"Mr. Krishna Iyer has a heart whose natural generosity and glowing warmth would scorch out any trace of malice or meanness. He cannot nurture a grudge towards any one, including unkind critics who have approached him with singular lack of humanity and understanding and who in learned tomes have raged and raged against the spreading of the light. Like Newman’s True Gentleman, he had too much good sense to be affronted by insults and was too well employed to remember injuries…There are judges who are more erudite than Justice Krishna Iyer, judges who have an excellent memory for Supreme Court and House of Lord citations, judges who can master the record of a case in a few minutes. But the one essential quality that distinguishes him from his judicial brethren and puts him in a class of his own is compassion. He took human suffering seriously and dispensed justice with compassion, which he possessed in abundance .”

His loss is a great loss to the legal fraternity.  He was not only a legislator, a minister and a judge but he was humane too. The humaneness made him stand apart from his peers. Let us all pay our tributes to such a great personality. Let us all pledge that we will be compassionate to our fellow human beings and work for the holistic development of the society at large.

Disclaimer: This blog or any post thereof is not to be considered to be in any way associated with the official stand of IIT kharagpur or RGSOIPL on the issues being discussed in the said post. The opinions on the blog are the authors own and should not be considered as legal advice.