The Hindu : New Delhi News : Justice Verma sees declining moral standards in judiciary

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Saturday, Aug 21, 2004

New Delhi

New Delhi

Justice Verma sees declining moral standards in judiciary

By Our Legal Correspondent

NEW DELHI, AUG. 20 . The former Chief Justice of India, J. S. Verma, has expressed serious concern over the `declining moral standards in the judiciary' and says "the CJI should have the ability to admonish, punish and even suspend errant judges".

In an interview to Karan Thapar in the BBC World's "Hardtalk India" programme, Mr. Verma says "the public perception of the judicial system disturbs me very much."

Mr. Verma, who was the Chief Justice of India between March 1997 and January 1998 was also unhappy that his successors at the Supreme Court promoted candidates whom he had rejected as unsuitable to be judges and the Chief Justices of High Courts, even though they were fully aware of his reasons for turning them down.

Giving an instance, he says "in one particular case, a former Prime Minister rang me up and told me that the reputation of an appointee to the post of Chief Justice of a High Court was not good. I told the Prime Minister, don't process the name further and send it [file] back to me, I will withdraw it."

He says "I withdrew it [recommendation] and told my colleagues who had advised me to recommend his name and rang up the judge myself to tell him that I was withdrawing the recommendation of his name and why... " Explaining how the same name was reconsidered, Mr. Verma says, "it is a well-known fact, at least in the judiciary, that he was made Chief Justice for a few months, by which he qualified for a further assignment also...

On recommending Justice M.M. Punchi to succeed him in spite of serious allegations against him, he says, "I had no mechanism to verify allegations of impropriety against Justice Punchi... That is why I am talking of an effective mechanism for imposing accountability."

Asked whether he would have investigated the allegations if he had the powers to do so, he says: "I would have, because if the allegations were false then, in fairness to the judge, his name should have been cleared and made public" and if the allegations were true "then certainly the logical consequences should have followed."

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