Comprehension Passage

Read the given passage given below and answer the questions that follow:

There is, however, the disturbing contrast between the breakneck speed of the Supreme Court in this case with other cases, which involve large scale and serious violations of fundamental freedoms. And at the back of the discourse looms large two questions, almost too frightening to voice: Has the Court done the one thing which a separate and equal judicial arm never does, and that is to cease being the counter-­majoritarian check to a powerful executive? Has the Court abandoned its role of judicial review over acts of government, reducing itself to an arbiter of private disputes?

I cannot but help recall what happened at Rashtrapati Bhavan when the then chief Justice of India M.N. Venkatachaliah was sworn in to his office in February 1993. Prime Minister P.V. Narasimha Rao said that he looked forward to a cordial relationship between the Court and the government.  He received a riposte which can only be described as classical — “Mr. Prime Minister, the relationship between us has to be correct, not cordial. Cordiality between court and government has no place in our constitutional scheme of checks and balances.”  When comes another such Chief Justice of India? And what must the Bheeshma Pitamah, recently turned 92, be going through when he surveys the present Court and notes that there is not one decision in the recent past where the Court has held against the executive?

And that there are several where it is the writ of the executive that runs, simply because there is no judgment of the Court. Witness the petitions against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, preventive detentions in Kashmir, and the challenge to the dilution of Article 370. And the appeal against the gag order of the Andhra Pradesh High Court preventing the reporting of the first information report about land grabbing by those with proximity to high places is still awaiting listing after two months.

What is meant by the word riposte?

1

An offending statement

2

A quick, clever reply to an insult or criticism

3

Sarcasm

4

Response

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