Afternoon Voice: New Delhi: Saturday, November 25, 2017.
It refers to
Supreme Court deciding to set up a five-member bench to examine if a retired
CJI-supervised Special Investigating Team (SIT) probe was required into
allegations of middleman being in nexus with some judges of higher judiciary in
a racket to fix judicial orders to enable admissions into medical colleges
debarred from admitting students for lack of infrastructure. Order follows
putting collegium-proceedings on appointment of judges on website. Some years
back, In-house procedure to probe a sitting High Court Judge in Madhya Pradesh
was invoked. All this is positive outcome of Right-To-Information Act
implemented on October 12, 2005 when a series of CIC-verdicts, though till now
stayed at Supreme Court and Delhi High Court, required transparency in
administrative side of immunised judicial system with judicial side otherwise
exempted from RTI Act. Even important public-authorities like including Prime
Minister Office and Lok Sabha Secretariat too adopted perfect transparency
while disclosing complaints against the then Chief Justice of India without
even CIC-intervention. It is noteworthy that before RTI Act was implemented,
only a cumbersome and totally ineffective system of impeachment of judges of
higher judiciary by the Parliament was only procedure to act against judges against
whom complaints were filed.
Chief Justice
of India now sue-motto takes steps for final decision on long-pending
stay-orders against CIC-verdicts which has been principally adopted in practice
now. For example, there is no sense in withholding information on earlier cases
of judicial appointments with similar cases being now made public through
websites.
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