Justice Gautam Patel: “I was wrong.” Arvind Kejriwal: “I am sorry.”

Moneylife Digital Team 06 April 2018

Public Interest

While Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal has been apologising to various politicians to get out of trouble, Justice Gautam Patel (of the Bombay High Court) made history by displaying extraordinary humility and intellectual honesty in admitting that he was wrong and rectified an order he had issued.

On 18th March, Justice Patel opened an old case where he had overlooked a particular rule, which prescribes a procedure to be followed if a certain sub-rule is invoked. The judge said, “When I delivered (the) judgement on 27 January 2017, I did not notice this Rule. I quite overlooked it. This was an error.” He chose to make a correction to ensure that “both orders are read together and this previous order (of 27 January 2017) is never cited, even advertently, as good law.” Justice Patel said, “... having realised the error, I believe it is primarily my responsibility to rectify it.” We can only wish there were more like him.

Arvind Kejriwal, corruption crusader turned CM of Delhi, was the butt of endless jokes on social media after his serial apologies to wriggle out of the many defamation cases filed against him. Unfortunately, the joke is on us, the people, whose hopes were raised by the promise of honesty and accountability in public life. Instead, Mr Kejriwal as CM is making history as the first CM whose chief secretary was assaulted in his home and who has issued a series of apologies while in office. Mr Kejriwal apologised to former minister Kapil Sibal and his son, Union minister Nitin Gadkari and Shiromani Akali Dal leader Bikram Singh Majithia who he had accused of being a ‘drug lord’.

While the first three have accepted the apology and withdrawn their cases, finance minister Arun Jaitley has refused to budge. Mr Jaitley was subjected to a humiliating cross-examination by Ram Jethmalani and would, understandably, not want to let Mr Kejriwal off without facing similar heat. But, with 33 defamation cases in 22 states, as a calendar of a few court dates posted by a follower of AAP shows, Mr Kejriwal and some his trusted lieutenants have a lot more apologising to do. This provoked a techie, to create an online apology generator which allows a personalised apology to be created by filling in any name.

Comments