The election of a Vice President is not an issue one needs to pay much attention to. But the present Vice Presidential election has compelled every citizen of this country to pay attention. This is not merely a contest between two individuals—it has turned into a historical clash of ideologies.
Published Sep 04, 2025 | 11:39 AM ⚊ Updated Sep 04, 2025 | 11:39 AM
Union Home Minister Amit Shah's remarks about Justice Sudarshan Reddy, INDIA bloc’s vice-presidential candidate, have triggered a nationwide debate. A 14-year-old judgment safeguarding the Constitution has been revisited.
Synopsis: For a Union Home Minister to denounce a Supreme Court verdict in such terms amounts to contempt of court. That does not mean judgments cannot be debated. Of course, anyone has the right to discuss them. But the only valid framework of such a debate is whether the verdict stayed within the ambit of the Constitution or overstepped it. In that light, the Salwa Judum verdict was fully constitutional and protective of the Constitution.
I have neither respect nor faith in electoral politics. In the seven decades of universal adult franchise, electoral politics has not made even the smallest attempt to resolve the daily problems of the people of this country.
Power acquired through elections has served only to expand the wealth, authority, and arrogance of the ruling classes. At best, those who occasionally caught crumbs falling from the rulers’ table, or those who managed to bore a few holes in that mighty stream of wealth and power and derived some benefit from it, might exist here and there.
But as a student of history, the lesson I have learnt is that electoral politics has contributed nothing to the development of the Indian people’s lives.
In such a system, those who occupy positions of power—even if they are good individuals—cannot do much that is exceptional. Over these seven decades, some good people indeed ascended those thrones of power. From classes oppressed for thousands of years by exploitation, repression, and particularly the vile Brahmanical-Manuvadi oppression in this country, a few too rose to high office.
But if we dispassionately examine their records, it becomes evident that, even at the most crucial times, they did nothing for the advancement of people’s lives, or at most did very little, even for the uplift of their own oppressed communities. Leave aside those elected as “people’s representatives” who became ministers, chief ministers, or prime ministers—even those who occupied constitutional positions such as President, Vice President, Chief Justice, or Chief Election Commissioner did not contribute any substantial good to the nation. Even when they came from oppressed sections, their tenure brought no real gains to their communities.
The Vice President’s office, though the second-highest constitutional post in the country, is limited by the Constitution to presiding over the Rajya Sabha and, in the absence of the President, discharging certain duties. Otherwise, it carries no independent significance. None of those who have held the position so far has left any notable mark.
In that sense, the election of a Vice President is not an issue one needs to pay much attention to. But the present Vice Presidential election has compelled every citizen of this country to pay attention. This is not merely a contest between two individuals—it has turned into a historical clash of ideologies.
The BJP-led NDA has fielded CP Radhakrishnan as its candidate. This 68-year-old from Tamil Nadu has spent 52 years of his life in the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Sangh Parivar. He is credited with building the RSS base in Tamil Nadu and Kerala and was known as a close associate of BJP stalwart Atal Bihari Vajpayee. But while Vajpayee had said “Rajdharma” was not followed by Narendra Modi during the Gujarat genocide, it was Radhakrishnan who, just weeks after that massacre, openly defied even his party line and organised the first public demonstration of support for Modi in Coimbatore. In that way, he possesses all the qualifications required by today’s Sangh Parivar.
In contrast, Justice B Sudarshan Reddy’s name was first proposed by the INDIA bloc and later endorsed by several parties outside that alliance as well. In truth, the very proposal of his name amounts to putting forward a candidacy of constitutional spirit against a candidacy of constitutional subversion. Now 79 years old, Justice Sudarshan Reddy has worked for over 50 years upholding the Constitution. He practiced law for more than 20 years at the Andhra Pradesh High Court, then served 12 years as a judge in the same court, before becoming Chief Justice of the Gauhati High Court in 2005. From 2007 to 2011, he was a judge of the Supreme Court.
As soon as his name was proposed, Union Home Minister Amit Shah launched attacks on him. As a minister in the NDA government, Shah could well ask people to vote for their own candidate and highlight his merits. But his choice to hurl accusations at the rival candidate itself shows that there is nothing positive to say about their own nominee. Those accusations, too, are baseless, absurd, malicious, and degrading to the prestige of the judiciary.
First, on August 22 at the Malayala Manorama festival in Kochi, and then on August 25 in an exclusive ANI interview, Shah directly named and attacked the opposition candidate. He called him an “Urban Naxal.” He said the Salwa Judum judgment breathed life into dying Naxalites. He claimed that without that verdict, the Naxalite problem would have ended twenty years ago. He alleged that the judgment annulled the tribals’ right to self-defense.
Each of these is an outright lie—or at best a half-truth, which amounts to the same. The Salwa Judum judgment was not the verdict of a single individual; it was a decision of a two-judge Supreme Court bench. In the fourteen years since, that judgment has come up before many other judges. It has never been overturned, modified, or found faulty.
For a Union Home Minister to denounce a Supreme Court verdict in such terms amounts to contempt of court. That does not mean judgments cannot be debated. Of course, anyone has the right to discuss them. But the only valid framework of such a debate is whether the verdict stayed within the ambit of the Constitution or overstepped it. In that light, the Salwa Judum verdict was fully constitutional and protective of the Constitution.
To claim that the judgment nullified the tribals’ right to self-defense is the biggest lie of all. In Chhattisgarh, to suppress the Naxalite movement, the then Congress government under Mahendra Karma set up a murderous mafia outfit called Salwa Judum. They recruited tribal youth, armed them with guns, designated them as Special Police Officers, and authorised them to kill Naxalites and their sympathisers among the adivasis at will. In this bloody campaign, Salwa Judum burned hundreds of villages to drive tribals away from Naxalites, chased them, confined some in detention camps, and forced lakhs to flee to other regions and states.
The number of those killed or the women raped in this process is countless. When this internecine violence among tribals reached a horrific scale, social scientist Nandini Sundar, historian Ramachandra Guha, and former bureaucrat E.A.S. Sarma filed a petition in the Supreme Court in 2007. It came before the bench of Justice Sudarshan Reddy and Justice Surinder Nijjar. After four years of hearing, they ruled that giving guns and unrestrained powers to any group of people without proper qualifications, training, or a legal framework was unconstitutional.
If Shah now denounces that judgment, does he mean that anyone can be handed guns, and massacres can be excused with a blanket pardon?
In one sense, we must thank Shah. His remarks on Justice Sudarshan Reddy’s candidature have triggered a nationwide debate. A 14-year-old judgment safeguarding the Constitution has been revisited. What usually passes off quietly as a routine Vice Presidential election has now become a subject of national debate, rekindling necessary discussions, memories, and controversies.
In response to a letter by eighteen former judges stating that a Supreme Court verdict should not be dragged into political disputes, another letter, most probably engineered by Sangh Parivar, emerged—signed by 56 former judges —claiming that the first letter itself was political, thereby endorsing Shah’s view. It is a rare occasion when judges have entered into an open public debate like this. It has become plain and clear before the nation, who stands by the Constitution and who justifies its destruction.
In the past, during the elections of M Venkaiah Naidu and PV Narasimha Rao, individuals and parties had called for setting aside political differences and supporting them as “sons of Telugu soil.” The same people and parties now openly abandon that “son of the soil” sentiment when it does not suit their interests. Both those in power and those in opposition are also visible, siding with the destroyers of the Constitution—whether for the sake of cases pending against them, or for cheap promises like “whoever gives us urea.”
Judges, being human, naturally have political and social opinions. They should. But in discharging their duties, they must never exceed constitutional limits. They must function solely as interpreters and protectors of the Constitution. Justice Sudarshan Reddy has repeatedly described himself as a socialist, an adherent of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia’s ideas. Yet, in his judgments, he has never let his personal opinions override constitutional boundaries.
Many times in the past, and again on the day he filed his nomination papers, his voice echoed with a saying of Dr. Ram Manohar Lohia (1910–1967): “Agar sadakē khāmosh ho jāye, to sansad āwāra ho jāyegī.” If the streets fall silent, Parliament will go astray.
This statement carries profound meaning. If society ceases to witness public movements, protests, ideas, demonstrations, satyagrahas, meetings, assemblies, and pressures, then the legislature, governance, and power centers too will fall into aimlessness, directionlessness, and abandonment of democratic ideals.
For Parliament to remain vibrant, there must be a constant expression of public opinion. It is another way of saying that eternal vigilance is the price of democracy. Justice Sudarshan Reddy, who believes in Lohia’s words literally, has become a candidate now.
That is why this Vice Presidential election is historic, one that every citizen must pay heed to, and one that is generating the necessary wide-ranging debate.
(Views are personal. Edited by Majnu Babu).
