New Delhi: With a judge of the Karnataka High Court coming out openly in favour of declaration of assets by judges of superior courts, legal experts have come out with varying opinions on his view that the Chief Justice of India has no authority to speak for all of them.
While former Law Minister and senior advocate Shanti Bhushan was in agreement with the views of Justice D V Shylendra Kumar of the high court, noted jurist P P Rao said being the head of the judiciary as an institution, the CJI was entitled to speak on the contentious issue.
"The CJI can certainly speak on behalf of the judiciary as he is the head of the institution," Rao said.
"As such in legal terms CJI can only speak for judiciary as an institution and for himself and has no authority to stop a judge from making declaration about his assets" he said.
However, Bhushan supported the views in the article written by the Karnataka High Court judge and said "the CJI has no legal power to speak on behalf of all judges".
"Judges are fully entitled to make disclosure of their assets if they want to, and CJI has no legal authority to prevent them from doing so. Karnataka High Court judge is saying correctly that there are many judges who want to disclose their assets and liabilities to public," he said.
Justice Shylendra Kumar, a sitting High Court judge, in an article published in national daily, said the Chief Justice of India has no authority to speak for all the judges of the superior courts and his views are not necessarily the representation of the views of all the judges on the issue of disclosure of assets.
He said it was a misnomer that the judges of the superior courts are not ready to disclose their assets.
He wrote why should therefore be any reluctance or hesitation or even an objection on the part of any judge to disclose particulars of assets acquired by him/her after assuming the office of judge, as thereafter the only income of the judge is salary, unless the judge has any other source of income.
Senior advocate and Constitutional expert K K Venugopal, who also backed the article of the High Court judges, said "there has to be complete disclosure of assets by the judges.
"I agree with the judge of the Karnataka High Court that all judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts should make complete disclosure of assets and that this would only enhance the prestige of the Supreme Court and High Courts and also enhance the confidence that public have in administration of justice," he said.
Rao, who expressed his disagreement with Kumar's views on CJI's authority to speak for all judges, questioned his claims that majority of the judges were willing to make their assets publicly known.
"There again question arises about how many judges are willing to disclose their assets if CJI has no quantifiable criteria and hence he can not speak. Then how the Karnataka High Court judge can speak how many judges are willing to disclose their assets," Rao said.
"We are not to examine the legality of the view expressed as what he said was by virtue of his status in the institution," he said advocating that "let the government come out with a legislation in this regard.
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