Ramesh hails Nehru as 'extraordinary institution builder', cites his apology letter to ex-SC judge

Congress leader Jairam Ramesh on Friday hailed India's first prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru as an ''extraordinary institution builder'' while recalling how in 1959, he had written a letter of apology to former Supreme Court judge Vivian Bose. ''Much gets talked about on the relationship between the executive and the judiciary. Here is an extraordinary letter of apology written by the Prime Minister on June 26 1959 to Justice Vivian Bose - who was a former judge at the Supreme Court. What a truly extraordinary institution builder Nehru was!'' Ramesh said on X. In his letter to Justice Bose, Nehru had written, ''I have been constantly on the move during the last many days. It was my intention to write to you earlier in regard to some remarks I had made at a press conference but because of my travelling about, I could not do so.'' ''A few days ago when I was in Trivandrum, I received a letter from the Honorary Secretary of the Calcutta Bar Library Club with which he forwarded a resolution passed at a meeting of the Calcutta Bar disapproving of some remarks I had made about you. As soon as I received this letter, I sent a reply to the Secretary of the Calcutta Bar Library Club,'' Nehru had said. ''I should like to express personally to you my deep regret at the remarks I made in this connection at the press conference I addressed in Delhi earlier this month. I realise fully that those remarks were improper and I should not have allowed myself to utter them,'' he had said. Nehru said he was taken rather unawares by the questions put to him and he was thinking of many other things at that time also. ''I trust you will be good enough to accept my apology for this impropriety which I have committed,'' Nehru had said.