The Hindu : Weed out corrupt judicial officers, SC tells HCs

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Tuesday, Sep 30, 2003

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National

Weed out corrupt judicial officers, SC tells HCs

By J. Venkatesan

New Delhi Sept. 29. The Supreme Court has underlined the need for the High Courts to weed out the deadwood and corrupt judicial officers in order to maintain a high standard of efficiency and honesty and to keep the subordinate judicial service unpolluted.

The court reiterated that the judicial service was not a service in the sense of an employment. "Judges are discharging their functions while exercising the sovereign judicial power of the State. Their honesty and integrity is expected to be beyond doubt. It should be reflected in their overall reputation. Further, the nature of judicial service is such that it cannot afford to suffer continuance in service of persons of doubtful integrity or who have lost their utility," the court observed.

A Bench, comprising Justice M.B. Shah (since retired) and Justice A.R. Lakshmanan, made this observation in a recent judgment upholding the compulsory retirement of certain judicial officers in Uttar Pradesh.

The Bench noted that if a committee of High Court judges did an evaluation of the conduct of judicial officers, except in very exceptional circumstances, the apex court would not interfere with the same particularly because the order of compulsory retirement was based on the subjective satisfaction of the authority.

Further, the Bench said it was impossible to prove by positive evidence the basis for doubting the integrity of the judicial officers. In the present day system reliance was required to be placed on the opinion of the higher officer who had the opportunity to watch the performance of the officers concerned from close quarters and formation of his opinion with regard to the overall reputation enjoyed by the officers concerned would be the basis.

"It is to be reiterated that for keeping the stream of justice unpolluted, repeated scrutiny of service records of judicial officers after specified age/completion of specified years of service provided under the Rules is a must by each and every High court as the lower judiciary is the foundation of the judicial system", the Bench said.

"We hope that the High Courts would take appropriate steps regularly for weeding out the deadwood or the persons polluting the justice delivery system", the Judges said and dismissed the appeals filed by the dismissed judicial officers.

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