Judicial Accountability Bill, Cure Worse Than Disease. [the Hindu]

Judicial accountability Bill, cure worse than disease: Justice Shah

Special Correspondent

Without transparency, there could be no accountability

Secrecy is only the preserve of dictatorship: Justice Shah

Cosmetic exercise designed to fool people: Prashant Bhushan

PANAJI: Highlighting serious lacunae in the proposed Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, 2010, the former Chief Justice of the Delhi and Madras High Courts Ajit Prakash Shah on Saturday cautioned that the measure was an example of cure being worse than the disease.

“There is a complete misalignment and a mismatch between the present system of judicial appointments and core values of judicial accountability.”

He was delivering the keynote address after inaugurating a two-day seminar on “Strengthening Democracy: Role of Judiciary” organised here by the International Centre Goa (ICG) in association with the Media Information and Communication Centre of India, the Friedrich Ebert foundation-India and the Goa High Court Bar Association.

Emphasising the need for accountability, Justice Shah said that without transparency, there could be no accountability; secrecy was only the preserve of a dictatorship.

Analysing judicial accountability and its nuances, Justice Shah said there must be a balance between the competing principles of judicial independence, on the one hand, and accountability and transparency, on the other.

Straightjacket definition

His primary objection is that the Bill seeks to provide a straightjacket definition of “misbehaviour” under Section 2(j), which tends to lose its elasticity and become both under-inclusive and over-inclusive. A minor, inadvertent breach of judicial standards could constitute misconduct, and in so far as the definition is exhaustive, it is incapable of catching within its fold any “misbehaviour” that might not be covered by this provision.

Secondly, he said, the Bill tended to render the Oversight Committee just a post office...