New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday faced
searching questions from the Delhi High Court for maintaining
the stand that the resolution passed by the judges of the top
judiciary for declaration of assets was not binding.
"If the resolution (of assets declaration) is not
binding, then the resolution passed to maintain judicial
values in court proceedings can also be said to be non-binding
and a judge, against whom an in-house inquiry is conducted in
case of deviation, can object to it," a bench comprising Chief
Justice A P Shah and Justice S Muralidhar said.
The Court made the remarks when Attorney General
Goolam E Vahanwati, appearing for the apex court, said the
resolution passed by Supreme Court judges in 1997 to declare
their assets to the CJI was voluntary in nature and it was not
binding.
The bench was hearing an appeal filed by the apex
court against the verdict of single bench of the High Court
which had held that office of the Chief Justice of India comes
within the purview of Right to Information Act and details of
judges assets should be revealed.
After hearing a brief argument by Vahanwati, the Court
admitted an appeal by the apex court and constituted a special
three-member bench to decide the controversial issue and fixed
November 12 and 13 for deciding the appeal.
The court did not pass a stay order on the single
judge bench verdict of September 2 after the Supreme Court did
not press for it.
The High Court had in its September 2 verdict on the
controversial issue held that the CJI was a public authority
and his office came within the purview of the transparency
law.
The judgement was contrary to the stand taken by CJI K
G Balakrishnan who had consistently been maintaining that his
office is beyond the purview of the Right to Information Act.
Opposing the plea of the Supreme Court, advocate
Prashant Bhushan, appearing for the RTI applicant seeking
information on assets, said such appeals would lead to
disrepute to the system.
The AG, however, objected and said "we are capable of
taking care of our system and we can take care of the
consequences of filing appeal in this matter."
The apex court had approached the High Court alleging
the judgement of the single judge bench was "bad in law"
and "deserves to be set aside".
Pointing out 58 "errors" in the 71-page verdict of the
single bench, the appeal filed by the Supreme Court Registry
said "the analysis of the single judge is essentially wrong
and the conclusions reached by him are unjustified in law and
Constitutional theory."
Bureau Report
