‘Chief justice’s moral right has no worth’

A Karnataka High Court judge has said the “moral authority” of the Chief Justice of India has no significance, and he is like a “serpent without fangs”. This is one of the strongest attacks ever on the head of the country’s judiciary, reports Nagendar Sharma.

A Karnataka High Court judge has said the “moral authority” of the Chief Justice of India has no significance, and he is like a “serpent without fangs”. This is one of the strongest attacks ever on the head of the country’s judiciary.

HT Image

Justice D.V. Shylendra Kumar, the first judge to question the CJI on the issue of declaration of assets in August, has now slammed the judiciary for its lack of accountability.

Earlier this month, he had asked his High Court Chief Justice P.D. Dinakaran to proceed on leave following the initiation of impeachment proceedings against him.

“The concept that the Chief Justice of India can exercise his moral authority to ensure that erring judges fall in place and behave themselves, is a misnomer and misconception,” Kumar wrote on his blog.

“The CJI, in so far as the relative position is concerned, is more like a serpent without fangs, who can only hiss, but not bite, which will be an open secret in no time and the serpent will not be feared by any one, however menacing it may look, however loud it may hiss!,” Kumar wrote.

The judge, who resorted to blogging to post his wealth details on it following the refusal of the Karnataka High Court to take a decision on the issue, has now put up his nine-page lecture, to be delivered on Sunday.

Kumar referred to the Dinakaran episode as the reason for his anger.

“I say so, for the reason that an errant judge is a person who has breached the moral code of conduct, is a brazen person, who does not respect moral authority, and the so-called authority of the CJI as the figure-head of the judicial family has virtually no effect on such errant judges,” he wrote.

Kumar has slammed the political system also for not taking a “merit-based approach on the impeachment motions brought before parliament.

“Impeachment mechanism may never be a practical methodology of disciplining an errant judge of a superior court, unless there is consensus amongst political parties. Grabbing power, clinging to office and survival is the uppermost objective of our elected representatives,” he said.

According to the judge, lawyers and citizens can play an important role in enforcing accountability in higher judiciary.

“Conduct of the judges while functioning in the courts is watched and judged by lawyers day in and day out.”