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Press Council chief is concerned over 'judicial populism'

Press Council of India chairman and former Supreme Court judge P B Sawant has expressed concern over corruption in judiciary and the trend of populism among certain judges in the garb of judicial activism.

Addressing the high court bar association in Nagpur yesterday on 'judicial accountability', Sawant said, ''These two are very disturbing developments.'' He said corruption was happening at ''some place at all levels'' and even if one or two judges were corrupt, it marred the image of the entire judiciary .

The populist trend among certain judges was more damaging than corruption, he said, adding that in the garb of judicial activism, things were done to humour the public opinion.

Sawant said that instead of playing to the gallery, a judge should be ready to take the podium and ''swim against the tide''. But in the garb of judicial activism, these judges were laying down wrong laws and precedents. He said populist judgments adversely affected the entire society.

Underlining the need for judicial accountability on both administrative and adjudicative sides, he said as things stand today, the Chief Justice of India could misuse his powers on appointments, promotions and transfer of high court judges.

Stressing the need to have a national judicial commission for appointments, transfers and removal of judges, Sawant said at present the CJI could have his nominees as high court judges by dangling the ''carrot of promotion to the chief justice of that high court or holding out the threat of transfers''. He need not consult anybody on transferring high court judges and even the government could not object to it.

Sawant said it was very to difficult to remove a corrupt judge through impeachment. In an apparent reference to the move to impeach former Supreme Court judge Ramaswamy, he said the entire impeachment proceeding was ''politicised''.

The PCI chief, who headed a sub-committee of the Supreme Court to go into charges of corruption against judge Ramaswamy during his tenure as chief justice of the Punjab and Haryana high court, said the committee had made ''full-fledged'' inquiry followed by initiation of impeachment proceedings. But the considerations of region and other things were brought in to defeat the impeachment motion.

About accountability on the judicial side, he said there were built-in safeguards. The court proceedings were open to the public and a wrong judgment could be challenged in higher court. But in case of wrong judgment at the level of Supreme Court, nothing could be done about it as there had to be finality at some stage, he added.

UNI

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