Keeping watch over judges

Renegade judge C.S. Karnan committed the “grossest and gravest actions of contempt of court” and deserved his jail sentence. His later behaviour, as the first high court judge to become a fugitive, only showed the kind of character who slipped through the system to hold high judicial office. These observations in the seven-judge bench’s order sentencing Mr Karnan has only now been made public on the Supreme Court website. Beyond the crass display of a judge who serves as a warning against those who stay in the system but abuse it, his conduct and misbehaviour and flight from justice brings out far larger questions of the way judges are appointed in India. In his concurring order, Justice Chelameswar asks key questions on an appropriate mechanism to assess the personality of someone who seeks a place in the higher courts.

The question of selection procedure was settled in favour of the Supreme Court in the collegium versus NJAC case. But the Karnan example, bringing disrepute to the system, should open up the debate on internal discipline of judges and courts. How do courts deal with a situation where the conduct of a judge needs corrective measures, besides impeachment? A devil’s advocate could argue that someone like Mr Karnan could slip in regardless of the system under which judges are chosen. Disciplinary committees comprising the Chief Justice and senior Supreme Court and high court judges may be an obvious solution. To give these disciplinary powers could be the way forward.