Judicial commissions have become a means to cool down protests and pacify the opposition at the cost of taxpayer’s money when disputes, tragedies or corruption scandals happen in Kerala.
On which report submitted by commissions after studying evidence collected over a long period while spending crores of rupees from the treasury has the government taken any action?
This was the much-applauded subject of K.T. Muhammed’s drama, Sakshatkaram, which was played before packed audiences all over Kerala years ago.
We know the political situation in which an inquiry commission was appointed in the solar bribery case.
Its terms of reference were decided as part of a compromise during the opposition’s protests.
The government authorises judicial commissions as per the Commission of Inquiry Act of 1958. The commission’s responsibility is to inquire about the matters assigned to it, collect information regarding them and submit a report to the government.
These days what the solar commission is trying to fulfil is also this responsibility. It can legally summon witnesses and collect evidence. The law gives the commission the authority to find and collect evidence as per the information given by people giving statements. However, the moral responsibility to examine and recognise whether the things said by people coming to give evidence are primarily believable or not rests with the commission.
In similar circumstances, when people appear before courts to give such information, to ensure that they are saying the truth, there is a practice of asking them to submit a statement or affidavit.
This is done to ensure that people who come to give information do not change their word later and to take legal action against them if they do so.
Also, this is done to personally ascertain the places where, according to the witness, the evidence is kept.
What Biju Radhakrishnan, who came to give evidence to the solar commission the other day, said was that he had some CDs that link the top political leadership in Kerala to the solar case as evidence. The commission gave him time as per his request to submit copies of these CDs as evidence. However, when that time ended, Biju Radhakrishnan came with another explanation and informed the commission that the CDs were kept at some place which could be reached in a few hours. After consulting lawyers, the journey undertaken by the commission, which believed those words, has turned into a joke.
The commission used the power vested in it in this effort to collect evidence.
However, the commission’s failure to legally ensure that Biju Radhakrishnan was saying the truth has led to the criticism that its Coimbatore journey was a farce.
If the solar commission had adopted the measures taken to effectively use the police to bring evidence before the Marad commission, when justice Thomas P. Joseph, a former judge of the high court, was in charge of it, the unfortunate events of the other day could have been avoided.
The lawyer assigned by the commission could have collected information properly from Biju Radhakrishnan and tried to find evidence with adequate support.
What Biju Radhakrishnan, who appeared as a witness, did was to keep even the commission in the dark, even when there was provision in law to clear it.
If there was evidence, using the official machinery to assist the commission would have been an effective move to find it. Anyway, it was pathetic evidence collection.
(The writer is a high court lawyer)
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