Privilege for Judges

There is a touch of poetic justice in what happened to the passage of the Judges (Declaration of Assets and Liabilities) Bill, 2009 in the Rajya Sabha on Monday. Lawmakers of the Upper House, cutting across party lines, vehemently opposed the introduction of the Bill until Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily had to defer the introduction of the Bill to “build greater consensus”. Much of the opposition to the Bill arose from Clause 6 under which assets of judges could not be made public. At a time when laws like the Right to Information Act seek to ensure greater transparency in public life and compel ministers, lawmakers and all public servants to declare their assets, one fails to see any justification in exempting judges alone from this obligation. Judges are citizens like other Indians and they are also public servants. We are not aware of any law or statute that excludes judges from the category of public servants. And judges have always insisted on greater transparency among all public servants including ministers, MPs, MLAs and bureaucrats. What logical defence can they offer for not being able to submit themselves to the same kind of transparency that they recommend for others? What acceptable argument can they offer for not letting charity begin at home? As Leader of the Opposition Arun Jaitley rightly observed, “Under Clause 6, a judge has to declare his assets to a competent authority, and this cannot be made public. If I want to contest an election I have to first declare my assets and these are made public. Thus Clause 6 seeks to give a different interpretation to Article 19 of the Constitution. We can’t have two different interpretations of the same article. We can’t have dual interpretations of the law for people seeking to hold public office and those already occupying public office.” In fact, this would amount to judges saying, “Well, we got in as public servants long before the RTI Act and the other laws relating to transparency in public life came along, and we want to keep it that way. You cannot expect the Judiciary to always practise what it preaches to others.” And such a stance is really no better than the stance of the lawmakers who often believe that they are above the law. Jaitley also said that the Bill had been “circulated among the judiciary’’ and ‘‘drafted on the basis of their recommendations”. Law Minister Moily has contested this, but there must be more than a grain of truth in this since the noted jurist Ram Jethmalani has called the Bill “a conspiracy of corruption.” According to him, “The Bill creates suspicion that the judiciary is seeking favours from the executive. This Bill will make the judiciary subservient to the executive.”

The purpose of an exclusive provision like Clause 6 for the judiciary alone would indicate that the judiciary is not unaware of the corruption that afflicts some of the courts. This is a fact of life that two former chief justices of India have attested to, and a fact that does not jell too well with the image of unquestionable honesty and integrity that the judiciary must project to stay in business. So it needs protection from public scrutiny in the form of Clause 6. But in a democracy there is no justification for just one segment of public servants to have special laws for itself. And can a mere law rid the judiciary of a stigma like the fake medical bills swindle? THE SENTINEL