Judges Assets Case bar group to intervene in public interest

Two days after a senior advocate declined to help Delhi High Court in adjudicating whether senior judges should make their assets public, there is word of intervention from a body of practising lawyers. Asserting that ‘people have a right to know about the assets of Judges and their family members,’ Delhi High Court Bar Association unanimously resolved last evening to ‘intervene in the petition pending adjudication.’ A resolution adopted by the Association authorised its president, K C Mittal, and honorary secretary, D K Sharma, to ‘take necessary steps.’ The Association officers will start by filing an intervention application, sources said. The Bar Association, which discussed the issue, noted that ‘under the Right to Information Act, the Supreme Court has not been exempted to disclose the information in the public domain.’ It said ‘a defensive judiciary-- on issues like declaration of assets-- will always be prone to pulls and pressures which will undermine its independence and erode public faith reposed in it.’ The Association suggested that either the Supreme Court ‘review all its judgements on right to information or the Parliament should repeal the Act.’ The High Court is hearing a petition from the Supreme Court against a directive that judges are not exempt from a three-year-old law giving citizens access to information once off limits. The directive came from India’s Central Information Commission, a statutory body set up following the enactment of the Right to Information Act, 2005. ‘It is amazing that the Supreme Court of India has to approach the High Court of Delhi to come to its rescue by filing a petition challenging the innocuous order of the CIC,’ the Association said. Applications for information on issues critics say have a bearing on major concerns about India’s judicial system have been resisted owing to confusion whether the Act applies to judges. The judiciary’s stance, articulated by Chief Justice of India K G Balakrishnan, evoked serious questions. The issue cropped up at a news conference on unsavoury judicial appointments addressed by Transparency International India spokesman R H Tahiliani and advocate Prashant Bhushan, members of a group for judicial accountability. On whether judges should declare their assets, Admiral Tahiliani cited a six year old Delhi High Court judgement requiring candidates running for political office to declare their assets. He referred to former CJI J S Verma’s retort demanding why judges do not declare their assets if they have nothing to hide ? Adm Tahiliani added that people who want to take shelter behind some excuse to keep their assets hidden from public eye must ‘in my simple judgement’ be presumed to have something to hide. On Monday, the High Court had stayed the CIC’s directive and requested senior advocate Fali S Nariman to be the amicus curie-- an impartial friend of the court. But declining the request the next day, Nariman pointed out that ‘Judges of the highest court who have powers to life and death over us citizens, judges who can send people to jail for contempt of its order must - I repeat must - show that they too are amenable to good practice.’

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