The Wire Staff 
New Delhi: Union law minister Kiren Rijiju has posted tweets which appear to address the criticism levelled against the Narendra Modi government over the appointment of a retired judge as a governor of a state.
Justice S. Abdul Nazeer was on Sunday, February 12, appointed governor of the state of Andhra Pradesh. The former Supreme Court judge, who retired recently, had been part of the crucial 2019 judgment on the Babri Masjid-Ram Janmabhoomi title dispute case, which went in favour of the Hindu litigants.
As The Wire noted in its report a day ago, he is the third judge of the five-judge Ayodhya bench to be named to a post-retirement sinecure by the Modi government.
The judge had also been a part of the majority of the bench that decided the demonetisation case in favour of the Union government in January this year.
The appointment thus invited reactions from opposition parties, including Congress, which said this was a threat to the independence of the judiciary.
Congress’s Jairam Ramesh quote-tweeted fact-checker and journalist Mohammed Zubair, who had posted a speech in which the late Bharatiya Janata Party leader Arun Jaitely had said, “Pre-retirement judgements are influenced by post-retirement jobs.” Zubair said in his tweet that Jaitely had said this in 2012, two years before the Narendra Modi-led BJP came to power.
News agency ANI tweeted former MP and Congress leader Rashid Alvi as having said that, “Appointing Justice Nazeer as Governor is reducing faith of people in judiciary.”
Rijiju, who has of late been vocal on the role of the judiciary amidst a tussle between the government and the Supreme Court Collegium over judge appointments, said the “whole eco-system is once again in full swing.”
“The Whole Eco-system is once again in full swing on the appointment of a Governor. They should better understand that, they can no more treat India as their personal fiefdom. Now, India will be guided by the people of India as per the provisions of the Constitution of India,” he said on Twitter, also posting the same message in Hindi.