New Delhi: Details of assets of sitting Supreme Court judges will now be mandatorily published on the official portal of the top court, making the information available for public scrutiny, ThePrint has learnt.
Sources from the top court registry said the resolution to make details of their assets public was adopted Tuesday by all 33 Supreme Court judges. The move is a departure from the current practice under which judges make the disclosure to the Chief Justice of India and it is not necessary to make them public, unless a specific judge on a voluntary basis desires to do so.
With the new resolution in place, public declaration of assets will no longer be a discretionary exercise and be applicable to future judges as well.
Sources said the judges took the decision in the wake of the controversy that arose following the alleged discovery of cash at the residence of then sitting Delhi High Court judge Yashwant Varma, who has since been transferred to the Allahabad High Court. In a step to ensure transparency in the enquiry process, Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna had made all documents related to the preliminary enquiry against Justice Varma public.
The incident has also triggered a debate over the appointment system of judges in the higher judiciary and widespread concern over the opacity of the judiciary’s functioning.
Sources added that the modalities for publishing the assets are yet to be determined. The resolution is likely to push high courts to also follow the footsteps of the apex court.
Public declaration of judges’ assets was first discussed in 1997 during a meeting chaired by then chief justice of India J. S. Verma. The resolution adopted then by all the sitting judges stated: “Every judge should make a declaration of all assets in the form of real estate or investment held in their names, in the name of their spouses or any other person dependent on them, to the Chief Justice.”
It did not include public disclosure.
Later, on 8 September 2009, the full court passed a new resolution to declare the assets of judges on the court’s website. But it added a caveat, which was that it would be done “purely on a voluntary basis”.
The practice of declaring assets on the website was followed by a few high courts as well.
However, from 2018 onwards, the voluntary declarations of assets stopped. With time, declarations made by former judges were also removed from the website. At present, there is a list of 28 judges posted in the section related to judges assets on the website. It says these judges have declared their assets to the CJI.
In 2019, the Supreme Court delivered a verdict, holding that judges’ personal assets and liabilities are not “personal information”. This judgement came on a decade-old case filed by Right to Information (RTI) activist Subhash Chandra Agarwal, who sought to know whether SC judges declared their assets to the CJI in accordance with the 1997 resolution.
(Edited by Gitanjali Das)
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