Pannalal Surana
Son of a great freedom fighter and first Chief Minister of the undivided State of Punjab, Bhimsen Sachar, Rajinder Sachar had imbibed the values of our national freedom struggle. He was deeply impressed by the thoughts of Dr Ram Manohar Lohia.
While he was practicing at the bar, he also participated in organisational and agitational activities of the Socialist Party.
Being impressed by his great legal acumen, Rajinder Sachar was invited to serve as a judge of the High Court. His long career as judge and later as Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court was marked by many path breaking judgements.
On retirement, Sachar again plunged into social work. He joined the People’s Union of Civil Liberties founded by the late Jayaprakash Narayan. He took up many issues. Most noteworthy among them is that of the arrest and harassment of Dr Vinayak Sen, a medical doctor with a brilliant academic career, who had gone to the rural areas of Chhattisgarh State to render medical aid to the Adivasis. The police arrested him and booked him under draconian laws so that he was not able to get bail. Sacharji and his PUCL colleagues fought many legal battles right up to the Supreme Court and finally won his release as a free man. At the instance of Sacharji, PUCL had extended legal aid to those who were alleged to be involved in Naxalite activities. Sacharji personally and PUCL as an organisation are committed to peaceful methods of public activities. They wanted to help those innocent men and women who were falsely implicated and must be given credit for securing liberty of so many honest social workers.
Another field of Sacharji’s special interest was Electoral Reforms. He succeeded in securing ‘None Of The Above’ (NOTA) option for voters who find that none of the contesting candidates appear to qualify for their vote.
It was found that some MPs and MLAs continued to enjoy all their rights and privileges even after getting convicted by the Courts. On a move initiated by the PUCL, the Supreme Court ruled that if MPs and MLAs are convicted of any offence and sentenced to imprisonment for not less than two years, they would lose their membership of the legislative body. Further, such persons are debarred from contesting elections for the next six years.
Sacharji had been campaigning against the provision in the Companies Act which permit the corporate houses to donate huge amounts to political parties of their choice. He also advocated that a system of Proportional Representation (PR) be adopted in place of the ‘first past the post’ system. Sacharji had participated in the day-long Dharna at Jantar Mantar by Socialist Party (India) on 10th August 2016.
Sacharji had extended support to many popular movements like NAPM and programs to popularise Panchayati Raj.
Justice Rajender Sachar will be remembered for long for his sterling services to strengthening Indian democracy.
