The Hindu : For greater judicial accountability

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Dec 06, 2002

Opinion

Opinion - Editorials

For greater judicial accountability

IT IS WIDELY accepted now that impeachment is much too unwieldy a procedure to punish judges who are guilty of corruption or misuse of authority and office. Not a single judge has been removed from office under this constitutional provision, something that not only points to the fact that the impeachment process is impractical but also underlines the need for alternative mechanisms to discipline errant members of the higher judiciary. The setting up of in-house committees to investigate the alleged misconduct of judges seems to have emerged as one of the options for dealing with this issue. The Chief Justice of India, G. B. Pattanaik, recently constituted the second such committee to probe some specific allegations of misconduct that were raised against three judges of the Karnataka High Court. The committee, which comprises three High Court judges, two of them Chief Justices, has been empowered to probe the reported misconduct of the three Karnataka judges at a resort near Mysore. A little earlier, another such committee was set up to investigate the role of three Punjab and Haryana High Court judges. The three were allegedly connected to the scam involving the former chief of the Punjab Public Service Commission, Ravindra Pal Singh Sidhu, and the committee's report on them is due to be submitted to the Chief Justice shortly.

Interestingly, the in-house inquiry against these three judges began as an unobtrusive probe around six months ago by the Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. When the probe was being conducted, the Chief Justice, Arun Saharya, took the radical step of withdrawing the work from the three judges, something that was restored to them only after his inquiry was completed and his report submitted to the then Chief Justice of India. In doing what he did, Mr. Justice Saharya was following a procedure laid down by the Supreme Court on the subject of dealing with complaints against High Court judges; the difference lay in the fact that it was not done before. Now, with the constitution of two in-house committees by the Chief Justice of India, attention has been drawn to a procedure which, on the one hand, is not as drastic or as unpractical as impeachment but, on the other hand, could serve as a mechanism to warn the higher judiciary that corruption and misconduct will be dealt with firmly.

What happens in the event that an in-house committee records a positive finding against a judge for misconduct or corruption? With impeachment being the only legal process to divest judges of their jobs, the only option would be for the Chief Justice of India to persuade them to resign. What such a procedure assumes is that a judge with any shred of self-respect will voluntarily relinquish his job the moment there is an adverse finding against him by a committee comprising his fellows in the judicial fraternity. If such in-house committees become an accepted norm, then this as well as other assumptions and expectations of the mechanism will be tested in the days to come.

In its consultation paper on the superior judiciary, the National Commission to Review the Working of the Constitution also suggested that committees of senior judges be set up to examine complaints about their fellows. At the same time, the NCRWC argued that the concept of `proved misbehaviour' needs to be considerably widened. While suggesting that it is not enough if misbehaviour is limited to bribery, misappropriation or other serious crimes, the paper wondered why it should not include relatively lesser lapses such as regularly failing to observe punctuality in court or not delivering judgments for years on end. What these and other such arguments underline is the need for two things. First, a mechanism that holds the superior judiciary accountable for acts which are less grave than crimes that reflect gross moral turpitude. Second, the introduction of effective and less cumbersome procedures to judge the judges and hold them accountable for their behaviour.

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