The headline-making judge who put Mistry back in the hot seat

NEW DELHI: He rarely speaks to the media. But he frequently makes headlines. He loves a good argument. And what he says produces plenty of arguments, too.Meet National Company Law Appellate Tribunal chairman Justice Sudhansu Jyoti Mukhopadhaya (69), who headed the bench that delivered the judgment reinstating Cyrus Mistry as chairman of Tata Sons.As the Tatas get ready to appeal in the SC against Justice Mukhopadhaya’s order, the ex-Supreme Court judge is in the news again. He has been here before. Sometime back, the SC overturned another of NCLAT’s headline-making orders that had put financial and operational creditors at par when distributing proceeds from a bankruptcy sale.Justice Mukhopadhaya though is unruffled — and he quotes Rabindranath Tagore to make his case. The judge, who has delivered over 1,800 judgments, quoted these lines from a Bengali verse by Tagore: “Roth bhaabe aami deb, poth bhaabe aami, murti bhaabe aami deb, haanse antarjaami (The Lord’s chariot, the path on which it is driven, and the idols, they all think they are to be worshipped, and God is amused).” And then Justice Mukhopadhaya explains: “A judge is like a saint, he can’t give, neither can he take. This is judgeship… what is to happen, has to happen. It is Almighty who decides.” It’s not “individuals” but “cases” that matter, Justice Mukhopadhaya says, when asked about heavyweight litigants who appear before him. Is any case special? “No, not at all. Every case is important to me, every case is sensitive to me. Case dekhna hai, not the person. I have handled cases like fodder scam, where a sitting chief minister’s name figured,” Justice Mukhopadhaya says when ET asks whether the high stakes in the Tata-Mistry case weighed on his mind.He is naturally unwilling to go into specifics of the case. But he does point to Chapter 16, Sections 241 and 242 of the Company’s Act that deal with “oppression and mismanagement”. Companies need to work on corporate governance to avoid internal strife spilling over to courts and tribunals, the NCLAT chairman says. 73063528 On the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code (IBC) Justice Mukhopadhaya says, the “IBC is for resolution. The idea is to avoid liquidation. It is not for money claims, not for filing suits, not adversarial…”, but “it is forward-looking”. “Remember, if corporates survive, employment will be generated. Bankers, financial institutions will survive. Small businesses, poor and farmers — everyone will benefit,” he says.Justice Mukhopadhaya took over as NCLAT chief in 2016. His earlier stint in the Supreme Court also saw drama. He was part of the bench that ruled that any MP or MLA will lose House membership immediately upon being sentenced to two or more years in jail for any crime. The judgment dramatically overturned Section 8(4) of the Representation of the People Act. And it affected politicians as important as Lalu Prasad.He was also part of the two-judge Supreme Court bench that controversially upheld the constitutionality of Indian Penal Code’s Section 377, which criminalised homosexuality. That judgment was later overturned by a larger bench of the apex court. 73063538 SENSE OF HUMOURThe judicial burden has done nothing to affect his sense of humour. “I am not serious in the court. I do crack jokes. I may show my anger, but not for the actual purpose of the anger,” he says. “Sometimes I speak more than lawyers,” he adds.Though many judges do not like high-pitched arguments, for Justice Mukhopadhaya it is like “music to my ears”.“I feel charged by people, and when there is fierce argument… ‘halla gulla’ in my court, it is like jugalbandi (duet),” he says.And what makes a good judge? Justice Mukhopadhaya says a good judge must have 56 qualities, referring to the 56 bhog offered traditionally to Lord Krishna.A second-generation lawyer, he did his schooling and college from Bihar and practised at Patna and Ranchi bench of Patna High Court before being appointed a judge in the Patna High Court in 1994. He served at different high courts across the country before becoming chief justice of the Gujarat High Court, and then being elevated to the Supreme Court in 2011.And how does he deal with stress? Yoga for an hour every day, and playing with his dog.

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