Justice Sen: My judgement was based on Constitution, law and conscience

TAPAS GHOSH

Calcutta, June 12: Justice Shyamal Sen, who led the committee that recommended changes to the territorial reach of a new Darjeeling set-up, has told The Telegraph his judgement was based on the “Constitution, the law of the land and allegiance to my conscience”. “Let people say whatever they want. I have done my duty. There was always going to be an aggrieved party. That is only normal and natural. If a person demands Rs 50 crore but is awarded only Rs 1,000, then that person is bound to be aggrieved. I don’t mind it. I know that my judgement was based on the Constitution, the law of the land and allegiance to my conscience,” Justice Sen said. The Gorkha Janmukti Morcha had dubbed the recommendations of the Justice Sen committee that only five of the 396 mouzas demanded by the hill party be included in the Gorkhaland Territorial Administration to be “unacceptable, unfair and humiliating”. Justice Sen explained that the criteria for deciding which mouzas should be included were listed in the GTA agreement to which the Morcha, the state government and the Centre were signatories and that he had merely applied the norms to reach his conclusion. “The criteria of homogeneity, contiguity, compactness and ground reality is there in the GTA agreement. I did not lay down these parameters,” Justice Sen said. “The Morcha was agreed on this, as was the state government and the Centre. I used my mind, my reasoning as well as submissions of all the parties to arrive at my conclusion.” Justice Sen said that the only thing that he did lay down was that the recommendations to be submitted to the government would be his and his alone. “All those in the committee, other than me, had their interests involved,” Justice Sen said. “The Morcha, the state government and the Centre all had their interests at stake. So, obviously, they could not sit in judgement on a matter where their own interests are involved. So, I made it very clear that the judgement would be mine alone. And the Morcha agreed to this.” Justice Sen said that no one should now say that they should have been consulted on the final recommendation after having agreed to his condition that he alone would give the final recommendations to the state government. “It was agreed upon that all the parties concerned would make their submissions but not participate in the decision-making,” Justice Sen said. “That would be left to me. If any of them had been involved in the decision-making, then it could have been challenged in a court of law and set aside. For, no one can judge his own cause.” But Justice Sen was all praise for the Morcha members on the committee. “They were all very fair and co-operative,” he said. “I was very impressed with their behaviour. I faced no problems during the functioning of the committee.” On not visiting the Dooars and the Terai to interact with the people to find out their views, Justice Sen said: “How would my going there have helped? The district magistrates of Darjeeling and Jalpaiguri provided me all the information I required. They know their districts much better than I do. They are the best people to have provided me with the information. Besides, some census reports were there which greatly helped me.” He said that some of the census reports were “confidential” and their contents could not be shared with other members of the committee. “The additional registrar general of the census department, who was a part of the committee, explained this to the other members,” he said. Now, Justice Sen said, “it is all over, I have no further role to play. My job has ended. I would not like to defend my own judgement.”(TT)