[This is Part II in a four-part series. Part I can be accessed here]
By writing to the Ministry of Home Affairs on August 3, 1950, the Madras Government had unknowingly set in motion a long consultation on the position of trials with assessors and jury in India. This consultative process, which began in 1950, soon became geared to the prospect of statutory amendment. In 1952, the wheels were set in motion in the Home Ministry, which began exploring the prospect of carrying out general amendments to the criminal procedure. While preparations were ongoing, a Private Member's Bill seeking deletion of the clauses on trial by jury and assessors was sought to be introduced in 1952 by SV Ramaswamy (Salem). Both Mr. Ramaswamy's Bill and the Government Bill introduced in 1954 were referred to a Parliamentary Committee, and the outcome of this long consultative process was the passage of Act No. 26 of 1955.
Split Verdicts and Opinions
The Central Government mulled about the course of action for a bit and finally began to solicit opinions from states in November 1950. At this point, most experience with jury trials lay with the 'Part A' States (the British Indian provinces), and the file suggests that the government also gave more emphasis to the opinions sent by these states than the 'Part B' states (such as Rajasthan). As it so happened, the issue was alive and under consideration before a Committee appointed by the Bihar Government (headed by SK Das J., who would go to the Supreme Court in 1956), and the government wrote separately to Bihar asking for copies of that report when it was ready.
Opinions trickled in, slowly. The Bihar report itself took more than a year to come. Though even by 1952 opinions were not in from all states, a general picture had begun to emerge. There was a split where 'important' states like Madras, Punjab and Uttar Pradesh appeared against the jury trial, and other 'important' states like Bombay and West Bengal seemed wholeheartedly in favour of it.
It is interesting to see whose opinions were being solicited by the states, in response to the letter sent by the centre. The question was never posed to the public, but to the experts: bureaucrats, judges, and lawyers. Some storied names wrote in. For instance, the Government of Madhya Pradesh sought opinions from the Nagpur High Court, where the Chief Justice Vivian Bose (later of the SC) writing that "I have no experience of trials by jury in a High Court but in general I am opposed to the jury system." His view was the majority view of that Court. Contrary to which, you had most of the Orissa and Calcutta High Court judges holding the view that the jury should be retained.
Even within the central government, it seems that there were split verdicts and opinions. The file noting recalls that BR Ambedkar had expressed a view against retaining juries, but at the same time, it was well-known that the Home Minister from 1951—KN Katju—was very much in favour of the jury trial. Diverging opinions were also expressed by the mandarins of these ministries on the file as it went back and forth from 1950 till 1954. Their opinions offer helpful summaries of arguments that were being advanced at the time.
We know what the main arguments for removing juries were: they were inefficient, susceptible to corruption, and led to perverse verdicts. We did not have persons with the requisite character to discharge jury duty. The biggest argument against an amendment was not one of principle, but pure pragmatism: There was no need to amend law, because the flexibility within the law already allowed states to render jury trials practically redundant if they wished. The arguments about the wrong kind of persons were, again, not arguments against the system but about its workings, and this could be fixed.
In this regard, it is interesting to get a glimpse of what happened when the file went outside the narrow sphere of solicited expert establishment opinion. This is through a letter from the Bombay Bar Association sent on September 17, 1951, to the Bombay Government. The letter does what the mandarins did not; expressly link the jury to values of citizenship, democracy, and also how long and hard people had fought to get this right during colonial rule.
Consideration in Parliament
Ultimately, since there was no consensus, the call in December 1952 was to recommend against permitting Madras to change the scheme of the law to fully abolish provisions on jury trials.
By this time, though, talk about amending criminal procedure had assumed a wider conspectus. After a couple of months, on January 3, 1953, the Ministry of Home Affairs issued a fresh memo to states, noting that "it has been felt for some time past and particularly since the transfer of power to Indian hands in 1947 that the structure of our judicial system with the rigidity and complexity of its procedure is wholly unsuitable to modern conditions." It noted that many states had begun reviewing criminal procedure, prompting the centre to undertake this exercise. The purpose of this memo was to help the government decide whether it was necessary to set up an all-India commission for reviewing the criminal law, and to this end it had annexed a note with broad thoughts and also 23 specific questions for states to formulate the opinions. (PS: besides the letter, the Home Minister prepared a lengthy primer on this issue as well, which was printed and circulated in 1953).
One of these, question no. 8, was "Abolition of the system of trial by assessors or the curtailment of the right of trial by jury in highly complicated cases like dacoity and criminal conspiracy by providing other safeguards if considered necessary in the interest of the accused". The framing of the question — abolition for assessors, and curtailment of the jury — is perhaps indicative of the general view formed in the previous two years that it was unsuitable to abolish jury trials, and that the Minister in-charge was in favour of its retention.
Opinion-seeking, as we have seen, takes time. Before this process could conclude, the issue of abolishing jury trials reached Parliament. SV Ramaswamy, Member of Parliament from Salem, introduced a Bill to amend the Criminal Procedure Code and abolish the systems of trial by assessors and juries in July 1952. As it so happened, he got his chance to speak again only on August 28, 1953. The lengthy debate which followed strayed far and wide from the topic and invited all members to chip in with thoughts about what was wrong with the system.
Ultimately, a motion to circulate the bill for public opinion was accepted. This was supported by the Government. While extending his support, the Home Minister also mentioned that a bill with proposals for the "entire field of administration of justice" was also in the works and would likely be tabled by the end of the year. A draft bill published in the gazette in December, and an official bill on these lines was finally introduced in April 1954. As promised by the Minister, and teased by the correspondence which began in January 1953, it touched a wide array of matters relating to criminal procedure. What is relevant for us are clauses 41 to 59. These proposed to do away with the system of assessors, and introduce a set of provisions to streamline jury trials, including by empowering a High Court to intervene and decide if a case should not be tried by jury due to its complexity.
Public Opinion and the Committee's View
The opinions solicited by Parliament on the Ramaswamy Bill are comparably more voluminous than what the central government managed in 1950-52. Naturally, though, there was no great shift of opinions during this time. But there are some interesting ones to flag.
There is a dilution of sorts in the view from Nagpur, with the High Court Judges only writing in support of abolishing assessors and not juries. Justice SK Das of the Patna High Court (chair of the Bihar Jury Committee) also wrote in expressing his wholehearted support of the jury trial and a need to improve rather than abolish it as "to abolish the system will be like killing the patient instead of treating him" (though, at the same time, condemning the quality of jurors). We also have future CJI Y.V. Chandrachud, writing as Hony. Secretary of the Advocates' Association of Western India, in support of retaining juries. Finally, there are powerful expositions on the values of jury trials by lawyers from Hyderabad, one of whom noted that a jury helped to keep the legal system accountable to the public, and that "one man's benevolent despotism is as detestable as single judge's benign administration of justice with unfettered discretion in law and determination."
When the Ramaswamy Bill was taken up for consideration again on March 12, 1954, the Home Minister jumped at the opportunity to inform the House about the impending government bill and a proposal which would be made to refer that bill to a Joint Select Committee thereafter. The Minister suggested that SV Ramaswamy agree that his bill also be referred to the Committee at that time, otherwise his government would have to oppose its further consideration. Naturally, it was decided that this Bill would also be taken by the Committee, whenever it was constituted.
The Joint Select Committee was in place by May, and submitted its Report in September 1954. The important and interesting parts of the document all pertain to topics other than what we are looking at. On the subject of assessors and juries, it simply noted at Paragraph 22 that it found the Government Bill more acceptable — delete assessors, while retaining juries. In some of the Minutes of Dissent, this stand was criticised, arguing that by permitting a de facto erosion of jury trial by leaving it up to courts and states "the real purpose of the jury is not likely to be served." At the same time, other dissents condemned the Committee for not suggesting abolition outright.
Passage into Law
The Criminal Procedure (Amendment) Bill 1954 took a while to finally clear Parliament and be gazetted in August of 1955. It was debated extensively both before and after the receipt of the Committee Report in both Houses. Only a sliver of the debate pertained to jury trials, though. In striking out assessors completely while retaining the prospect of jury trials, the government had struck a middle path. In theory, this retained the possibility for renewing jury trials in the hands of any government minded to do so. In practice, the establishment was content as long as juries were not the norm but an exception.
One wonders how happy the Home Minister himself was with this state of play, given how vocal a proponent he was of the jury trial. As it so happened, he did not continue for long in the Home Ministry portfolio, moving out to the Ministry of Defence that year. He would not be around for the next round of conversations on the jury trial, which would resume in a couple of years.
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