Hyderabad:In a career spanning over four decades in the judiciary and public service, retired Supreme Court judge Justice B, Sudershan Reddy has delivered several landmark judgments across various branches of law, including criminal jurisprudence, constitutional law, taxation, service law, and human rights.His most consequential judgment came in 2011 in the Nandini Sundar v. State of Chhattisgarh, in which the apex court banned the Salwa Judum militia and directed an end to the practice of using tribal youth as Special Police Officers to counter the Naxal insurgency.In that judgment, Justice Reddy observed: “We, the people as a nation, constituted ourselves as a sovereign democratic republic to conduct our affairs within the four corners of the Constitution, its goals and values. We expect the benefits of democratic participation to flow to us — all of us — so that we can take our rightful place in the league of nations, befitting our heritage and collective genius. Consequently, we must also bear the discipline and rigour of constitutionalism, the essence of which is accountability of power, whereby the power of the people vested in any organ of the State, and its agents, can only be used for promotion of constitutional values and vision.”He also delivered a significant ruling criticising the Union government for its inaction in probing black money cases, ordering the constitution of a Special Investigation Team under retired Supreme Court judge Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy to bring back unaccounted monies unlawfully held in foreign bank accounts.In that judgment, he noted: “The worries of this court also relate to whether the activities of engendering such unaccounted monies, transferring them abroad, and then routing them back to India may not actually be creating a culture that extols the virtue of such cycles, and whether such activities are viewed as desirable modes of individual and group action.”He struck down the policy of the Army College of Medical Sciences to reserve all its seats exclusively for wards of serving and retired Army personnel and widows of Army personnel. In his ruling, he stated: “If a vast majority of our youngsters, especially those belonging to disadvantaged groups, are denied access to higher educational institutions in the private sector, it would mean that, notwithstanding a naturally equal distribution of talent and ability, they would be left without access to higher education at all. That would constitute a state of social emergency with a potential for conflagration on an unimaginable scale.”In another judgment, Justice Reddy emphasised that “Education is one of the principal human activities to establish a humanised order in our country.”He also laid down guidelines prohibiting High Court judges from treating anonymous letters and petitions containing allegations against individuals or institutions as public interest litigation (PIL) and from ordering suo motu investigations.Justice Reddy was also part of the Constitution Bench that resolved the dispute between the Ambani brothers over gas allocation.
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