For a people driven to
despair by the shenanigans of its ruling classes, the higher Judiciary in India
seems to be a beacon of hope, an institution still committed to upholding our
constitutional principles.
And truly, the various High
Courts and the Supreme Court of our country have handed out judgements which have
restored the much needed sanity in the madness around us. At the same time, there
have been judgements which have been inexplicable and give reasons to doubt if
the higher courts are really the institution which are above ills afflicting
the organs of the state.
We, as Indians, have a
propensity to idolize and defend the indefensible if the alleged culprits are
our idols. The same tendency gets extended to our judiciary if a judge passes
even one judgement which is well received by the media and the thinking
classes. We then seem to forget that judgements are pronounced by humans and lesser
men, when officiating as judicial officers can wreak havoc in a way which
probably even politicians cannot.
The United States has well recognised
that most judges are political beings with defined ideologies and that their pronouncements
are well coloured by their individual biases. Hence, the appointment of judges
is a well defined affair in which the judges get appointed through a vote following
a hearing on their record. In India though, such appointments are driven by a
mix of political expediency and the fellowship of higher judiciary.
While any system of judicial
appointments will have some or the other loophole, what is more required is to
build a system of accountability of our Honourable Judges. Authority and
accountability need to go hand in hand if the authority is to perform what it
is empowered to. If the Prime Minister and the Council of Ministers is responsible
to the Prime Minister, the bureaucracy to the Prime Minister through a defined
chain of command, the legislators to the people and so on, what is the case for
exempting Judges from being accountable for their judgements?
So many times have the
judgements of lower courts been overturned by the High Court. Countless times have
High Court judgements been over-ruled by the Supreme Court. Stinging
observations have been passed by the higher judicial authority on the
atrociousness of judgements passed by the lower courts but that hasn’t made any
difference to the careers of any of the judges concerned. Why are those judges
who pass judgements which run contrary to principles of justice asked to explain
their conduct? And we are still talking only of the lower courts. Why should
the Honourable Supreme Court not be accountable? Before I am greeted with
disbelief, I would request the readers to assess a few judgements in recent
days
- The Court discharged Mayawati from the disproportionate assets case on technicalities
- The Court dismissed the petition against Mulayam Singh Yadav on unauthorised allotments of land
- The Court refused to make P Chidambaram subject to even an investigation in the 2G case when all facts point to his involvement in the decision making process
- An Honourable Judges’ penchant to dismiss any representation of the Gujarat Government in riot related cases at the outset itself
- Release of Sanjeev Nanda from jail even after accepting that he did run over 6 people in his Mercedes
While these judgements have
come in recent times, many other judgements in the last few years raise serious
doubts over the intent of the Honourable judges pronouncing those verdicts. The
regularisation of Commonwealth village on Yamuna Flood Plaints was blessed by
the Court before the matter blew up. A chance to reform the defection game and
resort politics was blown away by Supreme Court through a summary dismissal of
the Karnataka High Court judgement. Almost everyone in the know now accepts
that the then Chief Justice of India’s missionary drive on the Delhi sealing
was driven by considerations not exactly honourable. Another retired Chief
Justice of India has been hounded by serious allegations of accumulation of
unaccounted wealth involving him and his family. But has anything happened to
any of these people in question?
Armed with the powers of
Contempt, the Courts have in effect muzzled anyone who seeks to ask – “Why,
Your Honour, Why?”
It has become the norm for us
to blame the executive, the legislature and the law enforcement for the woes
plaguing our Nation. But if these legs of Governance are dysfunctional, can
the judiciary, which sits at the apex of our Governance, escape the blame? It
is the judges, the courts, which instil the fear of law among those who waver
from the path of probity. It is upto the courts to set rights wrong, for it is
they, who have the powers to summon, to probe and most importantly, to punish.
How can then we let this exalted institution rot and crumble under the weight
of unworthy men? How can we ensure that even those who are worthy enough to man
these sublime posts do not waver and pronounce verdicts without any ideological
or any other colour?
While not the perfect
panacea, a Judicial accountability bill is the need of the hour. Let not the
reform of our system stop at the demand for a Lokpal. We need a system
which requires judges to be accountable and a Judicial Accountability Framework is a need which we would do well to recognise and press for fulfillment of!
