A day after Home Minister Amit Shah attacked him over the Salwa Judum judgement and accused him of "supporting" Naxalism, Opposition vice presidential candidate B Sudershan Reddy on Saturday said he did not wish to join issues, asserting that the verdict was not his but that of the Supreme Court.
Mr Reddy, along with Justice S S Nijjar, was part of a top court bench that had in July 2011 ordered the disbanding of Salwa Judum, ruling that using tribal youths as Special Police Officers in the fight against Maoist insurgents was illegal and unconstitutional.
Citing the judgment, Home Minister Shah accused the former judge of the Supreme Court of 'supporting' Naxalism and said that had it not been there, Left Wing extremism would have ended by 2020.
Mr Reddy said that Mr Shah would not have made the remarks had he read the complete judgement.
"I do not wish to join an issue directly with the Honourable Home Minister of India, whose constitutional duty and obligation is to protect the life, liberty and property of every citizen, irrespective of ideological differences. Secondly, I have authored the judgment. The judgment is not mine, the judgment is of the Supreme Court," he told PTI in an interview.
Mr Reddy said there was another judge sitting with him on the bench and repeated attempts to get it "overruled" did not fructify.
"On merits of the judgement, I would not speak because I am trained by my peers that one should not speak about the greatness of one's own judgement. It is for the people to judge. It is not my personal document. I wish the Honourable Home Minister could have himself read the whole judgement instead of getting briefed by, I do not know... he would not have that much time to read the judgement which runs into about 40 pages. If he would have read the judgement, perhaps he would not have made that comment. That's all I say and leave it there," Mr Reddy said.
The Opposition's vice presidential candidate said he does not want to disturb the decorum of the debate by further commenting on the matter. "There must be decency in the debate," he said.
Speaking in Kerala on Friday, Mr Shah said, "Sudershan Reddy is the person who helped Naxalism. He gave Salwa Judum judgment. If the Salwa Judum judgement had not been given, the Naxal terrorism would have ended by 2020. He is the person who was inspired by the ideology that gave Salwa Judam judgment."
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
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