We can now expect more transparency from the judiciary. The official website of the Supreme Court of India have decided to disclose the assets of the Hon’ble Judges after tremendous speculation and debate on the need of such action. It is the outcome of meeting between twenty three Judges from various High Courts across the country along with Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan. It is, indeed, a good step towards increasing the accountability of the Judges towards the common people. This step has been wholeheartedly encouraged by the one of the Judicial Watchdogs.

It is the need of the day that assets and liabilities and the annual income tax returns of every public servant, including the Judges, should be published annually. The public servants are paid by the Government and the Government earns by way of taxes from the common people. Thus the Government, or the public servants, including the Judges or anyone from the equal hierarchy, should be accountable to the common people. The money of the common people that are paid to the Government in form of taxes should not be wasted or misused at any cost.

This is one of the easiest ways to track people who are holding on to illegally acquired assets. If the legal source of income of a public servant does not tally with his or her assets, then we can easily find out the inconsistency between his income and assets.

Though this is new to India, various nations have already existing laws imposed on their public servants to disclose their assets. In 1968, it was made compulsory by the All India Service Rules, that all public servants are required to disclose their assets, but there was no provision for making those disclosures public. The Ethics in Government Act, 1978 of the United States says that you cannot be terminated on the ground of non-disclosure of your assets, but definitely you can face a civil suit. Even in countries like Brazil and Kenya, such laws exist and violation of such laws leads to punishments which include removal from the office or even attachment of property or asset. But will it curb corruption in the judiciary or not is a complicated question.

Tags: assets, disclosure, income, income tax, Judges, liabilities, public servant, Supreme Court of India

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 5th, 2009 at 6:53 pm and is filed under Legal-Law. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.