'Let Shah panel reports be part of Law students' curriculum'

 The central government should provide adequate budget for ‘reprinting’ reports of the Justice JC Shah Commission, which investigated the atrocities during the Emergency, and these reports’ study should be made a part of law students’ curriculum.

“These reports have alarmingly ‘disappeared’ from most of the best libraries across the country, including the Supreme Court Judges Library,” said 80-year-old  Supreme Court advocate and visiting faculty of the Indian Law Institute Janak Raj Jai in an interaction on legal profession reforms.

“The study of these reports is a must for every law student as it educates us how the Constitution and various laws were twisted and manipulated during the Emergency, which has come to be termed as the darkest chapter of our democracy,” said Jai, who was the personal assistant to the first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru.

“Non-availability of the Shah Commission reports smacks of a conspiracy by a section of our political system to keep the younger generation ignorant about the Emergency,” he said.

Jai later worked as personal assistant to Indira Gandhi when she was Information and Broadcasting Minister during the Lal Bahadur Shastri regime, and later when she became the Prime Minister. He was arrested during the Emergency and spent 19 months in Tihar after he wrote a letter to Gandhi, opposing the Emergency imposed by her in 1975.

Jai said the Supreme Court’s observation about reforms in legal profession should begin in the right earnest and a filtering mechanism in the form of pre-enrolment exam for aspiring practicing lawyers was the need of the hour.“In many ways, lawyers are the interpreters of the Constitution for the citizens. They need to be competent enough to fight the ills of a young democracy and uphold the supremacy of the Constitution,” said Jai.

The former Nehru aide referred to the Emergency as one such phase during which lawyers’ understanding of the Constitutional rights were put to test by the state.

Jai recently released his book “President of India on Emergency” and endorsed a former Delhi University vice-chancellor’s suggesting that the Shah Commission Reports on the Emergency’s excesses should be made compulsory reading in law colleges.

Comparing his book with the one recently penned by President Pranab Mukherjee, Jai  said the latter seems to have erred in some facts and tried to hide more and reveal less on the Emergency.

The author said: “Mukherjee in his book has doubted the integrity of Justice J C Shah which probed the excesses during the Emergency.” 

Jai said he disagreed with Mukherjee’s book in which the President said the Shah Commission was collecting materials and information only to substantiate a preconceived conclusion. “The professionals need to hone the skills to be able to avert a Constitutional crisis like the Emergency,” he said.