I was at Music Academy Hall today listening to the address by the eminent Judge.
From his speech I gathered that a Judge of any Indian Court has got absolute security for his job which simply means power without accountability of any kind. This absolute power has not corrupted them for long only for the reason that there is little chance that they could use their power to their advantage. Yes ... the Judges hear and dispose only the petition of the petitioners and not their own! Therefore the both the beneficiary and the victim of Judges of Indian Judicial system are the petitioners. As a petitioner I posed a solution to the moot point of the address of the Judge at the end but I was not happy with the response that I received.
In my opinion I differ from the Judge in regards to the suggestion he proposed regards to things like enhancing their retirement age to 70+, ensuring full salary pension to them etc. More and more the system provides them an absolute benefit ... more they are going to be corrupt. More security that they get from the system will see to that they are less accountable and so may not be responsible for the petitioners. The fact that they have absolute security - more than any other Constitutional Functionary - does not mean that they may not desire more for it is human nature to seek more. The mortal Judge will also try to secure similarly for his/her siblings and thus arrogate with his power to be corrupt in spite of any amount of security bestowed to his/her position. Therefore the mechanism of ensuring accountability in a fool proof manner is what is required to ensure Judicial Accountability and Transparency to the society.
The Collegium of Judges can always manipulate any profile by selectively valuing the reports and that the speaker concurred today in his address. It should be noted that almost all Judges put a very brave face to deliver justice in all matters that receive abundant media publicity. But it is only a trivial percentage of all the cases handled by him/her. The monotony of a Judge's work today is that he is listed with about hundreds of cases a day in the background of several lakhs of backlog cases and so the predominant attitude is to dispose as many numbers as possible. Majority of the petitioners suffer only because of this attitude and that is the prime reason for the public in India avoiding Judiciary for their issues. Therefore it is not fair to make any assessment of a Judge based only on the trivial percentage of the cases that he or she handled that got the media publicity. The system should generate a number for accountability from all the cases and that was my suggestion.
I suggested that a Judgement of an High Court that has been accepted in appeal in an higher court has to be defended for the Judgement by the same Judge. First this will make the Judge's work life more invigorating for he can at times practice his advocates skills for gaining perfection as a sweet holiday from the monotony of hearing about hundred plus cases a day. More importantly the Judiciary can now have a numerical figure for his merit on day to day basis that can be used as an index of accountability. I know that much more has to be deliberated to bring in a clarity in my proposition. But I find it odd that Justice Shah responding in a manner that it may not work when the public expectation is that the public offices in India should ensure that such system are in place and function without scope for much ambiguity. A number for measuring the accountability has to be studied and it will be a futile exercise to believe that a more autonomous and secured Judge will deliver genuine Justice demanded by the society.
