The Union government on Friday said it had received reports of corruption in the judiciary but indicated that it cannot take action.
NEW DELHI: The Union government on Friday said it had received reports of corruption in the judiciary but indicated that it cannot take action.
The government’s statement comes just days after Justice Markandey Katju of the Supreme Court suggested that the corrupt should be hanged from lampposts.
“The government has no constitutional competence to set up any committee to look into allegations levelled against the judges of the Supreme Court and high courts,” Law Minister HR Bhardwaj said.
He was responding to a question raised by lawmakers Anil Basu and Ram Kripal Yadav. The MPs had asked the government if it had taken any ‘remedial measures’, or if such measures were ‘likely to be taken’ to “keep the judiciary, especially the higher judiciary, free from corruption”.
Bhardwaj said the Judges (Inquiry) Bill, 2006, seeking to devise a legislative framework to empower a judicial forum to deal with complaints against judges was introduced in the Lok Sabha last December.
As for establishing an impartial forum to look into complaints of corruption against judges, Bhardwaj said the issue is delicate. “The government has no constitutional competence in this regard,” he said.
Justice Katju had made his comment earlier this week, while dealing with an appeal by an accused in the fodder scandal of Bihar and Jharkhand. “The only way to rid the country of corruption is to hang a few of you on the lamppost,” he said. Railway Minister Lalu Prasad is the key accused in the case.
The judge said the law does not permit such penalties. “Otherwise, we would prefer to hang people like you on the lamppost,” he told the petitioner.
Justice Katju said corruption is pervasive in the country. “Nothing is free from corruption. Everybody wants to loot this country,” he said. “The only solution is to hang some people in public so that it acts as a deterrent.”
Corruption within the judiciary, however, has turned out to be a complex issue, with chief justices offering varied assessments. On the eve of his retirement four years ago, Chief Justice VN Khare admitted that corruption is prevalent in the higher judiciary but refused to quantify the percentage of honest judges.
One of his predecessors, SP Bharucha, had estimated that 80 per cent of judges are honest.
“Of course, corruption exists, but mostly in the subordinate judiciary,” Bharucha said. “It is shaking the faith of the people in the judiciary.”
Khare also believed that corruption was a problem primarily in the subordinate judiciary. “The degree varies in the high courts, but there is no corruption in the Supreme Court,” he said.
But Chief Justice KG Balakrishnan, who took over on January 14, said that while there may be corruption in the system, only a handful of superior court judges are corrupt.
According to Transparency International’s global corruption index, people in India consider political parties to be the most corrupt entities in the socio-political system.
Indians gave a 4.7 score to political parties on a scale of one to five, where five represents most corrupt. Police secured the same ranking as politicians. Parliament got 4.4; the legal system, 4.3; and media, 2.7.
The military, with its 2.1 score, is thought by people to be the cleanest Indian institution.
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