It was Khil Raj Regmi who as justice of the Supreme Court convicted former Maoist lawmaker Balkrishna Dhungel of murder and sentenced him to life imprisonment. Following the 2010 verdict, Regmi repeatedly directed barbs at the then Madhav Kumar Nepal government for failing to nab Dhungel as per the court order.
How have the tables turned! Now Regmi himself heads the interim government but nearly five months into his tenure as government head, he has failed to take any action against the person he convicted of murder.
This is not to single out Regmi. His inaction is only a small link in a long chain of executive neglect. Setting aside the argument of whether Dhungel’s was a crime related to the insurgency and hence justified in the context (in our view it is not), Dhungel’s case is emblematic of the constant tug-of-war between the executive and the judiciary that has been a hallmark of prolonged transition in Nepal. [break]
Transitional politics is always messy, with the dividing lines between the three organs of the state often blurred. Yet the extent to which the executive has simply ignored the directives of the apex court sends a disturbing message.
Take the executive’s dismal record of implementation of Supreme Court verdicts on public interest litigation (PIL). According to the annual report of SC’s verdict implementation directorate, only six percent of its directive orders on PIL were implemented by the government in 2012/13. Similarly, only 22 percent of mandamuses on PIL were put into practice.
Persistence of writ petitioners apparently does not pay. Only 18 percent of the verdicts related to writ petitions that demanded implementation of orders already issued by the court were implemented in the same period. Part of the reason some of these verdicts might not be implemented is obvious. PILs are often filed against negligence or corruption at government agencies and may involve high level bureaucrats and line ministers.
They would naturally put pressure on the executive and law enforcement agencies to go easy on court verdicts which could potentially get them into trouble. But again, what is most worrying is the extent to which these orders are being ignored by implementing agencies.
It is true that the Nepali executive has a very poor history of following through on court orders. In fact, the situation has not changed much if we analyze the trend of implementation of such verdicts post 1990 democratic change. But poor history cannot be a justification for complacency in upholding rule of law. This kind of blatant neglect of orders of the Supreme Court in the land by the executive sends wrong signal to potential criminals.
As the country braces for many more years of transitional politics, this sort of impunity could ultimately invite complete anarchy when no one is accountable to anyone, and there is no fear of rule of law. There is a thin line between lawlessness and anarchy. If the current state of lawlessness persists, the line might be breached before we realize it.
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