Readers who have been following this column know that I am no fan of the Congress. It is thus in reluctant surprise that I find myself in agreement, up to a point, with at least one Congressman. More surprising yet, this comes on an issue where I disagree, in part, with His Honour the Chief Justice of India.
The Congressman I refer to is M Veerappa Moily, chairman of the Second Administrative Reforms Commission. The Commission's report to Dr Manmohan Singh is undoubtedly destined to raise a lot of dust, no least for its recommendation that the office of the prime minister be kept out of the purview of the Lok Ayukta. (Interestingly, this flies in the face of the current prime minister's own opinion, which he has publicly expressed.) But the former chief minister of Karnataka came up with a valid, or at least a defensible, point when he wrote that judges too must declare their assets.
For the record, this is already required of the legislative and the executive branches of government in India. The Election Commission requires all candidates in parliamentary and state-level polls to place their assets on the record for public scrutiny. In the executive wing, similar demands are also made not just on ministers (who are necessarily also legislators in our system) but on civil servants too. Is there any reason why judges too should not be asked to follow suit?
It is equally tempting to dismiss Veerappa Moily's suggestion out of hand when he says that the other branches of government should have some role to play in the selection of judges. Given the horrible reputation of politicians -- something that they probably deserve one must admit -- it is easy to laugh off this recommendation. After all, the judiciary has, over the past decades, proven to be an institution that truly earns the respect of all Indians.
However, the wise man thinks in terms of institutions rather than individuals. Seen in that light, it is a little hard to say outright that one branch of government, the judicial wing, should exercise the right of supervising the other two, but that nobody should peer too closely at the majesty of the Bench. That is not a defensible position.
In the final analysis, ministers are responsible to the legislatures, and the legislators in turn must renew their mandate from the people at large at regular intervals, in the form of elections. But there is no such check on the judiciary.
The men and women who framed the Constitution gave Parliament the power to remove a judge who transgressed the proper code of conduct. But, in order to protect the judiciary from the whims and fancies of politicians, they also made the process of impeachment incredibly cumbersome. So, how does one discipline an errant member of the Bench?
The fact is that there is very few checks in the system once one reaches the level of a high court bench. A judge may be transferred, or he may be denied any work. But, unlike members of the executive and legislative wings, he cannot actually be removed