By Karan Thapar

One of the most highly regarded former judges of the Supreme Court, Justice Madan Lokur, recently told Karan Thapar that the Supreme Court has erred and cannot be proud of its Kashmir judgement, in which it upheld the Union government’s move to read down Article 370.

Justice Lokur also described the Supreme Court judgement as complex and complicated adding it’s at least 200 pages too long.

The full text of the talk is below and has been edited lightly for style and clarity.

Karan Thapar: Hello and welcome to a special interview for The Wire. There’s no doubt the Supreme Court’s Kashmir judgments of Monday, the 11th, are complicated and for some people very difficult to understand. They are, of course, widely anticipated and long expected. But that makes understanding them even more important. So joining me today to help explain the judgments is one of India’s foremost senior judges of the Supreme Court, the highly regarded and well-regarded Justice Madan Lokur. Will help us both understand the judgments as well as their implications and indeed their complications.

Justice Lokur, let me start with a simple general question. I’ll come to the details after that. How do you view, in an overall sense, the Kashmir judgments that were announced on Monday, the 11th? Are you impressed by the judicial arguments they contain, or do you have reservations about some of the reasoning and its implications?

Madan Lokur: Yes, well, thank you, Karan. There are two or three things. One is that the case wasn’t as complicated as the judgment makes it out to be. I think that maybe 200 or maybe 250 pages of the judgment were not necessary, unless I’ve missed something. I’ve not been able to connect the dots or something. But I think maybe 200 or 250 judgments could be straight away taken out. Now, in a judgment, I would expect that when you are referring to something which is not readily available, the constitution of India is readily available, a law enacted by Parliament is readily available. But when you’re talking about a constitutional order which has been passed with reference to Jammu and Kashmir, that’s not readily available. I mean, you have to go through the internet and get that, and some facts pertaining to the constitutional order, they were not a part of the judgment. So then it becomes very difficult when you’re reading the judgment, and then you want to refer to something. You have to go to your computer and try and look at the constitutional order and see what it says. So these are things which make it difficult to go through the judgment. Now, as far as the submissions are concerned and the reasoning is concerned, like I said, if you take out 200 or 250 pages, then it doesn’t become so complicated, then the issues get narrowed down. In fact, they were narrowed down at some part of the judgment. And if you look at it from that point of view, well, the reasoning you could disagree with is right. You, I mean, in any case, given the same facts, judges disagree.

KT: So what you’re saying in terms of your overall view is a) it could have been pages shorter, which would have made it easier to understand, b) it could have referred to many of the things that it talks about rather than requiring you to have to cross-reference them from computers. So it’s neither easily written nor easy to fully follow.

ML: Yes. In fact, it took me a long time to understand the judgment because it was so complicated. Then you keep going back and forth, forth and back.

KT: So they’ve made it deliberately difficult to follow.

ML: I don’t know whether they made it deliberately difficult, but it is difficult to follow.

This story was originally published in thewire.in. Read the full story here .