It would seem everybody was innocent of the meaning of discretionary quotas till the Supreme Court overturned the land allotment to Mr Bhagabati Prosad Banerjee, former judge of the Calcutta high court. The discretion of a powerful personage has everything to do with power and services, and nothing whatsoever to do with equity. Surely the system of discretionary quotas was instituted with precisely this logic in place. Complaints against ?abuse? of the discretionary quota have been made in court quite a number of times, and politicians, such as Mr Satish Sharma, Ms Sheila Dikshit and others, have been charged with nepotism in their discretionary allocations. There is always plenty to give away in exchange for services and loyalty, as reward and persuasion, and for the simple reason of kinship ? petrol pumps, land, LPG dealerships, LPG and telephone connections and so forth. The question is, how can the ?discretion? to give, granted specifically to power, not be misused? In what form was its ?use? envisaged?

The Supreme Court, however, has come down heavily on Mr Banerjee because of the evidence of abuse of professional position. The charge is that Mr Banerjee, as the judge sitting on a case relating to the distribution of quota land in Salt Lake, waited to pass his judgment until he had been assured of land from the chief minister?s quota. The harshness of the court?s rhetoric stems from a two-fold principle: one, that no one is above the law and two, that a judge should be particularly careful to be morally above reproach, not just technically competent. There are now plenty of questions, not only from Mr Banerjee?s side, but also, and ironically, from the petitioner?s side. Why were the other judges, who have received land in Salt Lake under the quota system, not found culpable? Why have the persons who awarded the land ? the former chief minister of West Bengal, Mr Jyoti Basu, and the other members of his cabinet ? not been found culpable? After all, it was Mr Sharma and Ms Dikshit in the dock earlier. Whatever the answers to these, the court?s focus on the misuse of the judge?s chair should reassure the layman to some extent. At the same time, the whole incident, whatever its final outcome, should prompt an end to the system of discretionary quotas.