A watershed year for SC’s fight against internal graft

For long, judiciary had been the public’s favourite whipping boy for its reluctance to look inwards and weed out black sheep from among the judges. Its holy cow approach towards the corrupt in the ranks, coupled with the coercive ‘contempt of court’ powers, had even forced staunch detractors to talk about corrupt judges in hushed voices in the corridors of the Supreme Court.

It is not that the judiciary headed by the Chief Justice of India had not been taking action against corrupt judges. But looking back, this year could well be a watershed, for, it took surgical steps to chop cancerous growths in the judicial limbs.

It all started with the Ghaziabad PF scam early this year. In the list of suspects were 35 judges — one from the Supreme Court, 11 from high courts and 23 from lower courts. When a petition reached the SC for a CBI probe into the matter, few put their money on a positive outcome, for everyone knew the judiciary’s ability to sweep things under the carpet.

Not this time, though. The SC took the opportunity to embark on a rarely traversed path. Not only did it order a CBI probe but also saw to it that a fair probe took place by refusing to extend the tenure of an additional judge of Allahabad HC and recommending transfers of four more judges — three from Allahabad HC and one from Uttarakhand HC.

If the decision to hear the PF scam petition in open court left the long closed inner room door of judiciary slightly ajar for the public to peep into, the subsequent actions and corrective measures certainly beamed a ray of hope, as for the first time there was a resolve not to sweep things under the carpet.

At a time when the apex court was dealing with the PF scam, the judiciary got smeared by another scam — cash delivered at a Punjab and Haryana HC judge’s residence ‘‘mistakenly’’ by none other than a senior state law officer. Again, it displayed steely nerves to order a CBI probe.

Prior to this, it had recommended the government to impeach a Calcutta HC judge who refused to resign despite being indicted by the in-house inquiry mechanism of having indulged in corrupt practices. Such a drastic step, which is historic too, showed that the CJI and the collegium of judges in the SC did not have a weak stomach when it came to taking action against the corrupt within the ranks.

Apart from action against corrupt judges, there is a need to overhaul the system so that judiciary’s public image remains intact. In this context, a Global Corruption Report’s suggestion to weed out corruption would not be out of place.
Source:-The Times of India Delhi 29 December 2008 P. 9
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