New Delhi: The Supreme Court on Wednesday in a landmark verdict declared that the office of Chief Justice of India comes under the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act. It held that the office of CJI is a public authority under the purview of the transparency law.
A five-judge constitution bench headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi pronounced the judgement. Other members of the bench are Justices N V Ramana, D Y Chandrachud, Deepak Gupta and Sanjiv Khanna.
The court ruled in 3:2 verdict, that the CJI office now comes under public scrutiny and falls under the category of public authority.
The move to bring the office of the CJI under the transparency law was initiated by RTI activist S C Agrawal. His lawyer Prashant Bhushan had submitted in the top court that though the apex court should not have been judging its own cause, it is hearing the appeals due to "doctrine of necessity".
A five-judge constitution bench had on April 4 reserved its verdict on the appeals filed in 2010 by the Supreme Court secretary general and its central public information officer against the high court and the central information commission's (CIC's) orders.
"Nobody wants to remain in the state of darkness or keep anybody in the state of darkness," it had said. "The question is drawing a line. In the name of transparency, you can't destroy the institution."
In a landmark verdict on January 10, 2010, the Delhi High Court had held that the office of the chief justice of India comes within the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) law, saying judicial independence was not a judge's privilege, but a responsibility cast upon him.
The 88-page judgement was then seen as a personal setback to the then CJI, K G Balakrishnan, who has been opposed to disclosure of information relating to judges under the RTI Act.
The high court verdict was delivered by a three-judge bench comprising Chief Justice A P Shah (since retired) and Justices Vikramjit Sen and S Muralidhar. The bench had dismissed a plea of the Supreme Court that contended bringing the CJI's office within the RTI Act would "hamper" judicial independence.
Referring to the RTI provisions, Bhushan had said they also deal with exemptions and information that cannot be given to applicants, but the public interest should always "outweigh" personal interests if the person concerned is holding or about to hold a public office.
Dealing with "judicial independence", he said the National Judicial Accountability Commission Act was struck down for protecting the judiciary against interference from the executive, but this did not mean that judiciary is free from "public scrutiny".
"This is not the independence from accountability. Independence of judiciary means it has to be independent from the executive and not independent from common public. People are entitled to know as to what public authorities are doing," Bhushan had said.
The deliberations of the collegium in appointing and overlooking judges or lawyers should be made public and information can be parted with under RTI on case-to-case basis keeping in mind the larger public interest, the lawyer had said.
The bench had said people, of late, were opting out and do not want to become judges because of the fear of negative publicity.
"On interaction, the reason appears to be the possibility of the negative observations, whether rightly or wrongly, being brought into the public domain," it had observed.
In such a case, besides losing judgeship and reputation, the professional and family life of the person are adversely affected, it had said.
The apex court had said it had brought about changes in the functioning of the collegium system and said now members have started interacting with prospective candidates.
READ: Genesis and evolution of Right To Information: Will Judiciary come under its purview?
