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India's top judiciary stuck in
asset cleft-stick
WSN Network
 In
times of crumbling moral values in public life, even the top
judiciary in India is at a loss about how to save its image, but the
insistence of India's top judge about not making it mandatory for
top judges to disclose their assets is hardly helping.
Last week, a
Karnataka high court judge publicly criticised the refusal to
disclose assets, said the Chief Justice of India did not have the
rigth to speak on behalf of entire judiciary, and went ahead and
disclosed his assets. That is not a dare that has been picked up by
many judges.
One of the judges
of Punjab and Haryana High Ciourt has followed suit but the pressure
is clearly up, and judiciary is looking for a face saving way out of
the mess.
Recently, the
government tried to push a bill in Parliament that would have
allowed the judges not to disclose the assets but it ran into heavy
resistance.
The controversy has
its origin in a 1997 Supreme Court resolution that all judges would
declare their assets to the chief justice. A recent Right to
Information application that sought those details was opposed on the
grounds that the 1997 resolution was non-binding. It is surprising
that judges in India want not to be judged by the same standards
with which they judge others. All those desirous of fighting polls
in India have to declare in detail their propertiesbut the argument
that if judges were to do the same, it will somehow compromise their
independence and give material to the grist mills of some angry
wayward litigants is not washing down.
Judges of India’s
higher judiciary are protected like few others. They self-select
their own, and impeaching a judge is so difficult that in
Independent India’s history not one has been sacked. The refusal to
disclose assets is being seen widely as a refusal or hitch in
conforming to the strictest standards of transparency. The standard
which is currently being asked of them is not exactly extraordinary;
it is merely what is asked of other public figures.
26
August 2009
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