Balakrishnan declares assets, only for 2009-10

Months after refusing to declare his assets, former chief justice of India (CJI) KG Balakrishnan has disclosed his assets and liabilities for 2009 and 2010, but has not provided information for 2007 and 2008.

Updated on: Jun 9, 2011, 23:34:56 IST

Hindustan Times | By Chetan Chauhan, New Delhi

Prefer HTon Google

Share via

Copy link

Months after refusing to declare his assets, former chief justice of India (CJI) KG Balakrishnan has disclosed his assets and liabilities for 2009 and 2010, but has not provided information for 2007 and 2008.

Balakrishnan, who heads the National Human Rights Commission, informed the Income Tax Department in April this year that he was not willing to disclose his assets as they were not related to any public interest.

A Kerala-based RTI activist had sought his I-T returns and assets from 2005 to 2009, which the I-T department had refused to provide following the former CJI's direction.

Under the transparency law, any third party information can be provided only after seeking consent from the concerned person. Now, there seems to be a change of heart with Balakrishnan's office in NHRC making his assets public in a reply to another RTI plea.

The reply says that the former CJI has not made an investment in shares and does not even have a fixed deposit. Balakrishnan, however, has five properties in his name, which includes a house in village Thrikkakara in Kerala.

He has also listed his family property worth Rs 3.5 lakh in Kerala among his assets.

Apart from that, Balakrishnan has a two bedroom flat and a plot in Ernakulum, costing about Rs 10 lakh. He also owns a residential flat in Faridabad, Haryana.

The former CJI does not seem to have penchant for vehicles and just has a Santro car of 2000 model. His wife Nirmala Balakrishnan owns a property in Kottayam district of Kerala.

What Balakrishnan has prevented is comparison of his wealth, if any. He didn't provide information about his wealth between 2006 and 2008 and for the period 2009 and 2010 the declaration has remained same.

The information about his assets were significant in wake of the then Left government in Kerala initiating probe against some of his relatives on allegations of accumulating wealth much more than their known sources of income.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Chetan Chauhan
Chetan Chauhan is the National Affairs Editor looking into all aspects of news and features from across India. A Chevening scholar with over three decades of experience in reporting and news management, Chetan has extensively covered all important aspects of the social sector, political economy, environment and climate change nationally and internationally. He did a journalism course at the Reuters Institute of Journalism in Oxford and Digital Media training at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He started as a reporter with The Statesman in 1996 and joined the Hindustan Times in 2000 in the metro bureau covering environment, crime and Delhi politics. He covered hot local news, from the Jessica Lal murder case to the rebellion of Delhi Congress MLAs against then Chief Minister Sheila Dikshit, to the replacement of toxic vehicle fuel with cleaner compressed natural gas (CNG) in the national capital. Some of his stories on air pollution became part of the Supreme Court’s landmark MC Mehta versus Government of India case in the National Capital Region (NCR), forcing the government to take corrective measures. As part of the national political bureau since 2004, he covered important central sectors such as environment, education, social justice, labour, rural development, water resources, renewable energy, agriculture, broadcasting and the Planning Commission for more than a decade producing several exclusive and investigative breaking stories. His specialisation is the environment, having covered at least a dozen United Nations global conferences on climate change, biodiversity and wildlife including climate summits in Paris, Copenhagen and Bali. He also covered India’s two five-year plans ---11th and 12th and reported on drafting and execution of right based laws such as Right to Education, Right to Information and rural job guarantee law, MG-NREGA, now being introduced in new format as VG-RAM-G Act. He has in-depth knowledge of social sector issues. He was one of the first to report on tigers vanishing from Sariska and Panna wildlife reserves in 2004 and 2008, respectively, leading to the setting up of the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) and the introduction of stringent penal provisions for poaching. He has written extensively on the rising human-animal conflict in India and the degradation of India’s biodiversity hotspots because of mining and other activities. Since 2004, Chetan has covered Parliament comprehensively and participated in training on the nuanced coverage of Parliament proceedings. He has travelled extensively across India to cover national and provincial elections since 1998, especially in the Hindi heartland states, considered India’s road to power. He writes a regular column for Hindustan Times, Ecostani, on important national politics, economy, Himalayan ecology and environmental issues. His other responsibilities include providing inputs for edits and edit page articles for the publication, apart from managing news flow from across India.Read More

Catch every big hit, every wicket with Crickit, a one stop destination for Live Scores, Match Stats, Infographics & much more. Explore now!

Stay updated with all top Cities including, Bengaluru, Delhi, Mumbai and more across India. Stay informed on the latest happenings in World News along with Delhi Election 2025 and Delhi Election Result 2025 Live, New Delhi Election Result Live, Kalkaji Election Result Live at Hindustan Times.