Judges Inquiry Bill will add to burden of cases in courts

NEW DELHI: There is no wisdom in saddling the judiciary with the task of examining public complaints against the judges while they are unable to clear their own backlog of cases in the courtrooms, a senior lawyer and Parliamentarian has warned.

Judiciary is already over-stretched to clear a staggering backlog of 32 million cases in the courts and the government has come up with a Judges Inquiry Bill that opens floodgates of cases against judges by allowing anyone to file the complaint against them.

"The National Judicial Council will be so much flooded that judges will have to abandon their normal judicial work and devote full time to the disposal of complaints," Ram Jethmalani, a senior advocate and member of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Law and Justice, said in his dissent note on the Bill.

Rejecting the Bill "in toto", Jethmalani said, "on the one hand the judges are thinking of creating night shifts for working of courts and on the other hand there is further unbearable burden of cases."

The government has introduced the Judges Inquiry Bill which envisages punishment for an errant judge, such as ordering him to quit, on the complaints filed by the public.

While the Committee has backed the punitive aspect of the Bill, it has rejected the concept that only judges should become members of the National Judicial Council sitting on the complaint against the judge.
      
The Committee has recommended widening of council by including members of Bar and the government.

Cautioning against the provison of additional penalities against judges other than those provided in the Constitution, Jethmalani said the Bill may not survive the judicial review by the Supreme Court.

"As the Bill seeks to provide an additional mode of removal and subjects a judge to additional penalties not provided for in the Constitution, the Bill, in my opinion, is wholly ultra vires," Jethmalani said in his note, adding many legal experts shared this view.

"If the government wishes to go ahead with the Bill in its present form, it will be well advised to secure the opinion of the Supreme Court to avoid the embarrassment of the apex court holding the Act to be invalid," he said.

"Witness after witness has deposed before the Committee that the remedy lies not in creating these additional measures and penalties and the Judicial Council to adjudge and inflict them but in changing the method of initial recruitment," Jethmalani pointed out.

But he did not specify the changes to be sought. He also said he fully shared the view with other experts that there should be a full-fledged 'National Judicial Commission' to deal with the matter.

Drawing attention of the Committee towards the sensitive nature of issue of penalising a judge, Jethmalani said the Bill could rob the judiciary of its respect among the people.

"When a judge has been advised to retire voluntarily, or censured, or admonished, it deprives the judge of all his dignty and stature, making him an object of contempt," Jethmalani said.

This will embolden every litigant to express lack of confidence in a judge and that he should excuse himself from the case in hand, he said

"The entire system of minor punishments will expose the entire judicial system to ridicule and be totally counter productive," he added.

Jethmalani's criticism of the Bill and of the recommendations of the Committee comes close on the heels of other Committee member Virendra Bhatia's suggestion against bringing the Chief Justice of India within its purview.

Dissenting with the Committee, Bhatia, a Rajya Sabha member, said it could lead to a "Pakistan-like situation" where Supreme Court Chief Justice Mohd Ifteqar Chaudhary was deposed in March for alleged misconduct, triggering widespread protests in the country.

However, the Committee chairman E M Sudarsana Natchiappan contends the Bill would further enhance "credibility of the judiciary through accountability."