NEW DELHI:
A landmark Supreme Court 1991 verdict that said judges can be prosecuted for corruption only after prior sanction must be revisited, vice-president Jagdeep Dhankhar said on Monday as he raised questions about the probe into allegations against sitting high court judge Yashwant Varma and praised former Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna for his steps in the sensational case.
Speaking at a book launch in the Capital, Dhankhar suggested that the inquiry by the three-member committee that looked into the allegations against justice Varma did not have any “constitutional premise or legal sanctity” and wondered how the panel recovered electronic equipment from witnesses.
“Everyone in the country is now thinking whether this will be washed off, whether it will fade with time, and they are really concerned. How come the criminal justice system was not operationalised as it would have done for every other individual?” Dhankhar asked.
“This issue for which people are waiting with bated breath, the money trail, its source, its purpose, did it pollute the judicial system? Who are the bigger sharks? We need to find out,” he added.
He also described as a “serious issue” the move of the panel to recover electronic equipment from witnesses. “This is a serious issue. How can this be done?” he asked.
Dhankhar’s comments came days after former CJI Khanna initiated the process for the removal of justice Varma by writing to President Droupadi Murmu and Prime Minister Narendra Modi, stating that the allegations of recovery of cash at the judge’s residence was serious and warranted initiation of proceedings for his removal under the Constitution.
If Varma is removed, he will be the first judge of a constitutional court to be.
On May 5, a three-member in-house enquiry committee submitted its report to the CJI confirming that cash was indeed found at the residence of justice Varma, then a sitting Delhi high court judge. This cash was kept in a storeroom where a fire broke out March 14, following which fire service officials and police, engaged in dousing the flames, discovered half-burnt currency notes stacked in a sack. The police even recorded a video of the cash .
HT reported on Saturday that questions about the money trail and recovery of cash are likely to be at the heart of justice Varma’s defence.
Dhankhar raised some questions about the three-judge panel formed by the CJI on March 22, comprising Punjab and Haryana high court chief justice Sheel Nagu, Himachal Pradesh high court chief justice G.S. Sandhawalia, and Karnataka high court judge, justice Anu Sivaraman.
“I wonder, as chairman of the Rajya Sabha, having examined the scenario which obtains in the country for removal of a judge………the committee can be legitimately constituted only either by the speaker or the chairman, as the case may be, when requisite number of members of Parliament come with a resolution to remove the judge. Now just imagine how much labour has gone to chief justices of two high courts. In one high court, the coverage area is two states and a Union Territory,” Dhankhar said.
“They are involved with an inquiry which does not have any constitutional premise or legal sanctity but most importantly it will be inconsequential. The inquiry report may be sent to anyone under a mechanism evolved by the court on the administrative side. Can, in this country, we afford to invest so much time at the cost of administrative work of the chief justice of the high court?” he added.
Dhankhar said the “time had come to revisit” the K Veeraswami vs Union of India case of 1991, which addressed the applicability of anti-corruption laws to judges of the higher judiciary and underscored the importance of judicial independence.
Justice Veeraswami, a former chief justice of the Madras high court, was accused of possessing assets disproportionate to his known sources of income during his tenure, and challenged the Central Bureau of Investigation’s case against him under the Prevention of Corruption Act, 1947.
The apex court held that judges were indeed “public servants” under the Prevention of Corruption Act, aligning with the definition provided in Section 21 of the Indian Penal Code, but added that to prosecute a judge, prior sanction was required.
Dhankhar said the country was “confronted with the jarring reality” that burnt currency was recovered from a judge’s residence in Lutyens Delhi, but no first information report was filed till date. He also said there was a need to “protect the judiciary” and to “ensure our judges are not made vulnerable because they decide fearlessly.”
“We have in the country rule of law, criminal justice system…Democracy has to be defined primarily by three aspects- expression, dialogue and accountability……The surest way to degenerate an individual or bring down an institution is to keep it away from probe, keep it away from scrutiny…..And therefore, if we have to really nurture democracy, ensure that democracy blossoms, it is inescapable that we hold every institution accountable and every individual accountable and in accordance with law,” he said.
Dhankhar, who was speaking at the release of the book ‘The Constitution We Adopted (With Artworks)’ edited by Vijay Hansaria, called for scientific criminal investigation of the case.
“…We are supposed to be innocent till proven otherwise. I am casting no aspersions. But all I say is that when it comes to national interest, we cannot divide into compartments, insiders or outsiders. We all are united in nurturing constitutional sense and spirit,” he said.
The vice-president appreciated former CJI Khanna and said the probe by the three-member panel had done what it could to the maximum extent. “…But time has come now for revisitation because the scenario is indeed one. for which every person in the country is waiting. They want nothing but absolute truth to come out”, he said.
Calling for expediting the investigation, the vice-president said he believed that the apex court acted “the very best so far” but now was the time to take a call. “Partly the confidence has been restored by Justice Khanna. When you put in public domain documentation which people thought will never be shown to them. That was a big step by him to project accountability and transparency,” he said.