While Honourable Lordships may rise to condemn and serve notices for contempt, on Chief Minister Parrikar saying in as many words that judges are not above corruption, his remarks are not off the mark. In fact they are chillingly close to the truth.
If an honest assessment and introspection is made, you will hear from several members of the Bar and yes indeed from the Bench, that the highest temples of justice have been besmirched and tainted. Mr Parrikar has rightly raised the accountability issue of judges by asking who are they accountable to when they are not to the code of ethics of justice.
A caveat of relativity is in order though. Corruption in the Judiciary is less than a miniscule of what it is in politics and administration. But while zero tolerance to corruption can be a pre and post election promise which is unfulfilled, with even the Chief Minister admitting that some of his departments are filled with corrupt officers, in the judiciary, zero corruption is not a luxury, it’s the absolute non negotiable without which the judicial system will collapse.
While the Chief Minister recounted an instance where Rs 15 lakhs meant for one Judge reached the home of the wrong judge who was extremely upright and made an issue, we must understand that corruption in the judiciary cannot be counted in terms of currency exchanged but the acts of moral turpitude, that are increasingly on display. In Goa there are instances of Judges who once held briefs as lawyers, trying the very same cases where they have appeared, for one of the parties and giving judgments in favour of the parties they once represented.
Extremely senior and “well respected” Judges have been heard giving orders in cases in favour of friendly petitioners, even when the advocates of petitioners have sought time to study replies of defendants.
Therefore when the Chief Minister says that Judges, rather than interpret the law, are making their own laws, the spirit of his statement needs to be accepted and supported.
But judicial corruption is not limited to Goa or even India.
The Global Corruption Report, 2007, of Transparency International, looks at how, corruption affects the judicial processes and seeks relevant solutions. This publication focuses on judges and courts but broadly looks at those responsible for enforcing judicial decisions. Quoting from the reportage of the release of the report on the World Bank’s Law and Justice portal in 2007, the Global Corruption Report “looks at the social context of the judiciary and shows how societal expectations, the existence of non-state justice mechanisms and the strength of informal networks that circumvent the justice system, all have a bearing on judicial corruption. The report takes a close look at the two main judicial corruption problems: political interference and petty bribery by court personnel”.
In the Indian context or more specifically the Goan context, it is not difficult to underscore how much informal systems at the grass root levels and moving up, have influenced the way the judiciary behaves. This cannot be over emphasized in Goa where Judges are an intrinsic part of the societal mix, with some of them being neighbours of litigants, and yet not saying those three words “not before me”, words that show the difference between a Judge who is true to the oath that he takes, and one who is not.
Chief Minister Parrikar needs to be commended, for having spoken out with such clarity, on at least this issue. No Chief Minister or even a cabinet minister has ever quite criticized the Judiciary in a manner so bluntly as Mr Parrikar has done.
The Judiciary needs to seriously introspect and re-assess its role of keeping democracy alive through its most important heartbeat-trust. The fall out of all that the Chief Minister said today is the overall erosion of trust, by those who look at Judges as their last refuge. When Judges fail people by accepting extraneous and immoral gratifications, it’s a crime akin to a doctor not attending to a dying patient.
Every day, across courts in India, there is some judge failing some person who is before him with folded hands and a prayer, in the belief that our great democracy has at least one institution which is sacred, the judiciary. That belief gets shattered daily.
