TAMING THE JUDICIARY

A war was recently waged in the lobbies of the Indian judicial system when Chairman of Press Council of India Markandey Katju went on the rampage to disclose some flabbergasting and astounding activities being conducted in the world of Indian judiciary.

It all commenced with Markandey Katju’s 20 July blog post entry in which he accused the former UPA government as well as former Chief Justice of India Justice Ramesh Chandra Lahoti, of indulging in illegitimate activities and disrupting the procedure prescribed by the law by choosing an unfit and illegible person to work as an additional judge in the high court. Justice Katju in his blog post pasted on record many arguments and cited his own personal experience with the corruption in judiciary. Justice Katju in his explosive blog post lucidly accused former three Chief Justices of India (CJIs) in giving extension to the term of a tainted judge notwithstanding being fully aware of the unlawful activities of the corrupt judge.

Justice Katju wrote that while he was working as the Chief Justice of Madras High Court from 2004 to 2005, he came to know about various astonishing acts of an Additional Judge of Madras High Court. Justice Katju wrote that the alleged judge was first a district judge and because during his tenure as a district judge in Tamil Nadu, he had granted bail to a political leader from a party which was at that time an ally to the Congress part. Due to this act of the judge, the alleged judge soon gained prominence and he despite of 8 adverse entries against him on record was selected as an Additional judge in the High Court of Madras.

When Justice Katju went to Madras in order to head the Madras High Court, he came to know about the judge and asked the Chief Justice of India at that time, Justice Lahoti to get a covert Intelligence Bureau (IB) investigation done against him. Justice Lahoti executed the same and corroborated to the belief of Justice Katju that, that judge was actually involved in some heinous activities.

After that Justice Katju tells that he came to know that the tenure of that alleged judge was coming to an end and Justice Katju assumed that the accused judge would be sacked from his position on grounds of the IB enquiry report but paradoxically all thing went against his assumption. The alleged judge even got 1 year extension to his tenure.

Later Justice Katju writes that he came to know about the true facts of the situation. He writes that at that time three senior most judges of Supreme Court namely Justice Lahoti, Justice Sabarwal and Justice Ruma Pal, asked the government to sack the alleged judge after the end of his tenure in view of the consequences of the inquiry report against him. The three judges therefore sent their recommendation to the Government of India, but amusingly the Government of India asked the then CJI to extend the alleged judge’s term. Later Justice Katju found out that, as former Prime Minister of India, Manmohan Singh was leaving for New York in order to attend a meeting of New York General Assembly, he was notified by the leader from Tamilnadu (the one who was granted bail by the alleged judge) that Mr. Singh’s government would fall by the time he returns back to India owning to the ousting of the alleged judge. This panicked former Prime Minister of India, who asked his close aides to do something in order to avert the toppling of the government at the center. After that a message was sent through PMO (Prime Minister’s Office) that a crisis would engulf the whole nation if the alleged judge is ousted from his position. After getting to know about this, the then CJI gave in and yielded to the pressure and finally extended the term of the judge. The addition judge was later given another term as Additional judge by the new CJI Justice Sabarwal and then the next CJI  KG Balkrishnan confirmed his as a permanent judge(but transferred to another high court).

In yet another blog spot Justice Katju made some new revelations. This time on the target was Justice Kapadia. In his new blog post Justice Katju tells, that on ground of suspicion of suspicious activities being carried out by a judge in the Allahabad High Court, Justice Katju arranged for numbers of 3 agents of that judge through which he used to arrange for bribes. Justice Katju gave the numbers of the agents to the then CJI Justice SH Kapadia and asked him to get the phones of these people taped by authorities in order to check whether the doubt of Justice Katju was reasonable or not. After some time Justice Kapadia informed Justice Katju that his suspicion was correct and the judge was indulged in such activities. On account of this Justice Kapadia was required to pass an impeachment motion against the judge but unfortunately justice Kapadia did nothing.

While some judges including the former CJI who have been accused blame Justice Katju of defaming judiciary but has Justice Katju done anything wrong? I clearly don’t believe in that. First of all the accusations alleged by Justice Katju clearly have many facts supporting then and therefore hold true. If exposing corruption is a bad task then one day corrupt ministers would blame organizations like CBI etc. of defaming the government by exposing the corrupt activities of the government.

Today we need to emend the procedure prescribed by the constitution in choosing high court and Supreme Court judges. Today we need to manage the influence of government in the selection processes of the judges while on the other hand the collegiate which chooses the judges must be made transparent also and for this purpose we need to make the process more pellucid and transparent. Then only we would be successful in taming the corruption in judiciary or many other matter like this would get unreported.

JAI HIND, JAI BHARAT

JAI MA BHARATI