Only 95 out of 795 judges across 25 HCs, SC have declared assets: Data

Nearly a fortnight after a full-court meeting of Supreme Court judges vowed to publicly declare the details of their assets, only 95 of 795 active and presiding judges, or about 12 per cent, across 25 High Courts (HCs) and the apex court have done so, an analysis of publicly available data shows.

 

For instance, the Kerala HC leads the pack, with 41 of 44 judges having declared their assets, while 11 of 12 judges at the Himachal Pradesh HC have made their asset details publicly available on the court website. The Punjab and Haryana HC has 30 of 53 judges disclosing their wealth, while Delhi has only seven of 36 judges doing the same.

 

The Madras High Court has seen just five of its 65 judges disclose their assets. At the Chhattisgarh HC, only one out of 16 judges has done so.

 

Eighteen 18 HCs — including those in Allahabad, Bombay, Calcutta, Gujarat, Patna, Andhra Pradesh, Gauhati, Manipur, Jammu & Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Odisha, Rajasthan, Sikkim, Tripura, Uttarakhand, and Telangana — do not have any publicly disclosed information on the assets of their presiding judges. Among these, the Allahabad HC has the highest sanctioned strength of 81 serving judges.

 

The full-court SC meeting, where all presiding judges vowed to declare the details of their assets publicly, was prompted as a good-faith measure after wads of unaccounted cash were allegedly found at the official residence of Justice Yashwant Varma. Justice Varma, who was till then the second senior-most judge of the Delhi HC, was promptly transferred to his parent HC, the Allahabad High Court, where he took oath on April 5.

 

On March 22, Chief Justice of India (CJI) Justice Sanjiv Khanna constituted a three-member committee to investigate the allegations against Justice Varma. The Chief Justice of the Allahabad HC has been instructed not to assign any cases to Justice Varma for now.

 

Justice Varma denied all allegations in his response: “I state unequivocally that no cash was ever placed in that storeroom either by me or any of my family members and strongly denounce the suggestion that the alleged cash belonged to us. The very idea or suggestion that this cash was kept or stored by us is totally preposterous. The suggestion that one would store cash in an open, freely accessible and commonly used storeroom near the staff quarters or in an outhouse verges on the incredible and incredulous…” he wrote.

 

If the committee finds some truth to the allegations, the CJI is empowered to impose “minor corrective measures”, such as advising the judge to resign or retire voluntarily. If the judge refuses, judicial work may be withheld. The Constitution also allows for a SC or HC judge to be impeached through a special majority of Parliament on the ground of “proved misbehaviour or incapacity”.

 

Nearly 30 years ago, the SC established an in-house mechanism to investigate judicial misconduct. Under this, the CJI can review a complaint and appoint a three-member judicial committee to conduct a fact-finding inquiry. In 1997, during another full-court meeting, the SC laid down certain judicial standards and principles to be followed by judges of both the apex court and HCs. Declarations of assets remain voluntary and are governed by the Supreme Court’s internal resolutions.

 

Framework

 

Though Articles 124(4) and 217(1)(b) of the Constitution govern the removal of SC and HC judges, allowing for impeachment on grounds of “proved misbehaviour” or “incapacity", the process outlined in the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, is highly complex, with no judge having been successfully impeached to date. Parliament introduced the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill in 2010, during the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, aiming to establish enforceable judicial standards and introduce mechanisms for handling complaints against judges.

 

The Bill proposed the creation of a national judicial oversight committee, a complaints scrutiny panel, and an investigation committee. On December 28, 2011, discussions on this Bill were led from the treasury Benches, emphasising the necessity of structured oversight. The Lok Sabha passed the Bill in March 2012, but it was never taken up in the Rajya Sabha, ultimately lapsing with the dissolution of the 15th Lok Sabha in 2014.

 

Since then, no formal attempts have been made to revive the legislation.

 

In August 2023, the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, and Law and Justice recommended that the government enact legislation mandating judges of the Supreme Court and HCs to publicly declare their assets annually. The committee’s recommendation highlighted the need for increased transparency and accountability within the judiciary.

 

On March 27, in response to a question by the Rashtriya Janta Dal MP Manoj Kumar Jha, the Centre told the Rajya Sabha the matter of mandatory declaration of assets was taken up by the Supreme Court. The reply was by Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal.