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Supreme Court to Hear Contempt Case Against Prashant Bhushan




   Prashant Bhushan. In the background is the Supreme Court




A proceeding that is supposed to decide whether two tweets by lawyer Prashant Bhushan constitute contempt of the Supreme Court is turning into a serious legal quagmire for the apex court, partly because of its decision to revive an older case and partly because of aggressive legal moves by Bhushan’s advocates.

The Supreme Court will pronounce on Friday its judgment in the contempt of court case initiated suo motu (on its own) against lawyer Prashant Bhushan for his tweets against the Supreme Court and Chief Justice of India, SA Bobde.

A three-judge bench headed by justice Arun Mishra and also comprising justices BR Gavai and Krishna Murari will deliver its verdict at 11 am. August 14.


The Supreme Court of India ( founded 28  Jan. 1950) is the premier judicial court under the Constitution of India. It is the highest constitutional court, and has the power of judicial review. Of late the supreme court has been  embroiled in several controversies, from serious allegations of corruption at the highest level of the judiciary, expensive private holidays at the tax payers expense, refusal to divulge details of judges' assets to the public, secrecy in the appointments of judges', to refusal to make information public under the Right to Information Act. Former prime minister Manmohan Singh, has stated that corruption is one of the major challenges facing the judiciary, and suggested that there is an urgent need to eradicate this menace.

Astrologers have long recognized that the date of birth of an individual or the date of formation of an institution contains hints about future challenges. Startling information can often be obtained from what have come to be known as the Sabian symbols. These were developed by  Elsie Wheeler, a medium who channeled the symbolism of each astrological degree, and astrologer Marc Edmund Jones.  Essentially, the chart wheel that most of us work from in astrology contains 360 degrees (being that it is a circle, of course), and the Sabian Symbols describe each individual degree through the use of metaphor and archetypal imagery. 

Presented here is the noon chart for 28 Jan. 1950, the date the Supreme Court of India was founded. Using the standard solar arc directions, the progressed Sun [18ar] is within a degree of an opposition  to radix Neptune [17li19]. Dane Rudhyar’s [1] delineation of the Sabian symbol for radix Neptune is:

PHASE 198 (LIBRA 18°): TWO MEN PLACED UNDER ARREST.

KEYNOTE: A breakdown in the constructive relationship between the individual and society, and the expectable result.

If it is to remain steady and consistent, every form of order must be able to protect itself by the application of sanctions. Both a society and a personal ego constitute forms of order. Any form of order excludes what the form cannot securely and safely hold. It excludes, or exiles, the alien, the unassimilable; if it cannot send them to outer space, it must isolate them in a special type of inner space, a prison. The individual whose actions introduce unacceptable principles into the established order runs the risk of being "punished" or re-formed according to this order. The problem for a society is how to include in its patterns of order agencies or channels for transformation — and particularly how to keep them truly operative; for individuals, it is how to make their transforming vision or impulse acceptable to society. The fact that two men are pictured under arrest suggests a polarization and a purpose transcending a merely personal fit of recklessness.

This is the third stage of the fortieth sequence. Negative as the image may seem, one may see implied in it the power in every individual to assume social risks in order to express his convictions or deepest desires. Nevertheless, one thing is needed: FACING THE CONSEQUENCES.

Could the situation being faced by activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan for contempt of the Supreme Court be described any better?



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