New Delhi: Former Chief Justice of India, DY Chandrachud, in an interview with veteran journalist Stephen Sackur, clarified his purported remark that he sat before a deity before announcing the landmark Ram Temple judgement.
A clip of the interview has gone viral on social media.
"If you look at social media and try and derive what was said by a judge, you will get the wrong answer," Chandrachud said on BBC's HardTalk.
Have a look at the video here:
Speaking about his Ram Temple judgment remark, the ex-CJI said, "If you look at social media and try and derive what was said by a judge, you will get the wrong answer. I make no bones of the fact that I am a man of faith, our Constitution does not require you to be an atheist to be an independent judge, and I value my faith, what my faith teaches me is the universality of religion and irrespective of who comes to my court, and that applies to all other judges in Supreme Court, you dispense equal and even-handed justice".
"Within that area of conflict, how do you find a sense of calm, of equanimity, different judges have different ways to approach that need for calm and equanimity. For me, time in meditation and prayer is very important, but my time in meditation and prayer teaches me to be even-handed to every religious group and community in the country," he added.
Notably, in October last year, Justice Chandrachud courted controversy with his remarks and faced criticism from Opposition leaders. Addressing a gathering at his native Kanhersar village in Maharashtra's Khed taluka, he had said, "Very often we have cases (to adjudicate) but we don't arrive at a solution. Something similar happened during the Ayodhya (Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid dispute) case which was in front of me for three months. I sat before the deity and told him he needed to find a solution."
Justice Chandrachud was part of the five-judge bench that pronounced judgment in the decades-old Ayodhya temple-mosque dispute.
