Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan said that the judiciary was not against declaration of judges' assets and that it was ready to "implicitly" obey Parliament if it passes a law in this regard.
Ahead of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s address to the chief justices’ conference on Sunday, top judges set the tone for the event in their closed-door conclave by patting themselves on the back, and blaming the government for not providing adequate funds for the judiciary.
A two-day conference of India’s top judges beginning in New Delhi on Friday will discuss 21 important issues except corruption in the judiciary and judges’ reluctance to declare their assets.
Though RTI is not on its agenda, the two-day conference of chief justices starting on Friday will be held under the shadow of the embarrassing withdrawal in the recent session of Parliament of the Bill seeking to keep the declarations of assets by judges out of the public domain.
Making the point that courts do not have a “magic wand” to do away with pendency of cases, the Supreme Court , after examining figures for both civil and criminal cases over seven years, has for the first time assessed that the judiciary needs “1,547 High Court judges and 23,207 subordinate court judges, only to clear the backlog in one year.
No doubt about it, judges are fashioned for a nobler cause. Our higher judiciary selfselects new recruits, contempt laws ensure that even truth is not a defence, and impeaching a senior judge is so tortuous, that in Independent India, not one has been sacked. Often termed the world’s most powerful, our high courts and Supreme Court have earned their independence — they command respect like few other institutions. But this freedom demands a stricter standard.
Forced by the Opposition to shelve the judges’ assets Bill, Union Minster for Law and Justice M Veerappa Moily has ruled out fresh deliberations with the Chief Justice of India on the issue.
The recent episode over the Judges (Declaration of Assets & Liabilities) Bill is a reminder of just how difficult genuine judicial reform is going to be. In some ways, the issue of declaring assets is the simplest item on judicial reform. Judges’ legitimate concerns that their disclosures not be used as a tool of harassment can be easily handled without having to exempt them from public disclosure.
It is not the law minister alone who was rebuffed in the Rajya Sabha on August 3, when the House would not grant him leave to introduce the Judges (Declaration of Assets and Liabilities) Bill 2009.
The opposition has done the right thing by forcing the government to defer the Judges (Declaration of Assets and Liabilities) Bill.