Misuse of Powers by Judges in India.

MISUSE OF POWERS BY JUDGES IN INDIA

Author: Ms. Gayatri sahu, ITM University, Raipur.

INTRODUCTION

These days the Indian judiciary has been in the press for a lot of reasons as judicial misconduct is a serious deviation from the accepted practice of a judge in the judicial arena. The broadest category of complaints against judges is misconduct complains. Judicial misconduct has a very specific and unethical meaning under the code of judicial conduct. Misconduct of judges of the high court and the supreme court is a problem with no tangible solution so far. Lawyers may boycott, the public may protest, vigilante namesake committee could be set, unrealistic impeachment proceedings may be initiated, errant judges may be transferred, and nothing beyond. We have enough provisions for disciplining the subordinate judiciary, the high court is vested with the power of superintendence. On the other hand, no disciplinary action can be taken against the judges of the supreme court and high court.

BENCH FIXING

On 15th January 2018, this was the first time ever in the history of India that the nation’s senior-most judges spoke directly to the nation through the media. Four judges of supreme court addressed  a press conference and calling the press conference an extraordinary event in the history of Indian judiciary and said our country’s democracy is in danger and trying to damage Independent pillar of  Judiciary and also trying to take possession of Independent pillar of Judiciary these were the allegations against CJI Dipak Mishra that he gives all the political controversial case to the judges who give favorable judgment, and it is not for the first time but in many cases it has been seen that cases of political controversial go in the hands of judges who will give favorable judgment on it. One of the reasons behind the mysterious death of Justice BH Loya is that he was looking behind the case of Amit Shah who was accused. Amit Shah gets arrested on 25 July 2010 in fake encounter case, and he was sent to jail and when he gets released on bail and again his case was dealing with the same matter and his case hearing was going on CBI Court in 2014, and the first judge who was hearing Amit shah’s case get transferred after that the Justice Loya came to look after the case of Amit Shah. Justice Loya kept so many dates for hearing but Amit Shah didn’t appear on said date due to his continuous non – appearance on fixed date, Justice Loya decided a final date to appear before the court for Amit Shah on 20 December 2014 and what a coincidence, on 30 November 2014 Justice Loya  died of heart attack as per the media report but the reason behind his death is he was going to decide on murder charges against BJP President Amit Shah when he died of a heart attack on 2014 but on 20th November 2017 caravan magazine took an interview with Justice Loya’s family and found that there was no one in his family history who died due to heart attack and his mother told that justice Loya was under pressure to give favorable judgment and he was also offered with a bribe of 100 crore rupees so the reason behind his death is he was going to decide against BJP President Amit Shah .

MISUSE OF JUDGES OFFICE

Judges office is being misused due to political pressure and sometimes due to judges own personal family matters, even in open and shut cases, the CJI has never given permission to file an FIR against judges.

DESTROYING THE ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE

It is the CJI who will hear and decide the case even when allegations are against him said supreme court relying on a 1996 judgment in Dc Saxena’s Case, the Supreme Court on November 14, 2017, said that it is the duty of the chief justice to assign judicial work to brothers. The main issue is the Government wants to Hijack Judiciary as the judiciary is already overburdened from the lower to higher with a backlog of cases. Government is trying  with various methods so that Independent pillar of Judiciary can easily fall down and government’s full focus is on influencing judiciary so that slowly he may obtain a control over Judiciary and even government already tried an attempt to bring NJAC which is power of government to appoint judges so that he may appoint a judge of his own choice and a judge who will give the decision according to the government’s will.

LONGING FOR NAME, FAME SUCCESS AND ACHIEVEMENT

Judicial corruption and appointments have been the bone of contention not only between the judiciary and the government but also within the judicial community. BJP President Amit Shah’s case in which one judge gets transferred and another died or we can say another judge being killed and declared him died of heart attack due to not taking bribery for giving a favorable judgment is the best example of longing for name, fame success, and achievement, as they thought giving bribery to judges, leads to favorable judgment and when their motive doesn’t get fulfilled so, to prevent their name fame they don’t hesitate even in killing someone’s life so as to save their reputation which is prevailing in society, country or nation from a long time.

Judgment FIXING

Assignment of Justice Loya’s case to J. Arun Mishra’s bench are the reasons, grounds, evidence and mounting political pressure results in judgement fixing and are given or passed to the judges  who will give favourable judgement and to the judges who refuses for any further investigation if any plea filed by any people against such case. Even recent allegations against CJI was again given to the Justice Arun Mishra so that there can be a favorable judgment in favor of CJI.

CORRUPTION                    

Sahara Birla Diaries is a high profile case in which there are direct allegations against Modi  for corruption charges that he took a bribe from Sahara Birla when he was CM of Gujarat and according to some entries in the documents seized, payments were allegedly made to a Gujarat – CM even Prashant Bhushan filed a petition in the apex court alleging an investigation on Sahara Birla Raids but again our CJI gives the case to the Arun Mishra and he said he will not investigate the case because he doesn’t think that  the case needs to be further investigated.

Eminent jurist Fali Nariman in his book ‘The State of The Nation’ wrote, “The sin of corruption is not confined to politicians, ministers, and bureaucrats. In India it has infiltrated into all organs of the state – with one difference: whereas the media, print and electronic, is not constrained when questioning or publicizing wrongdoing amongst public officials ( except for the sanctions imposed by the general law of defamation), the same is not the case with regard to questioning alleged lapses of good conduct amongst the judges in the higher judiciary. These judges enjoy almost complete protection under the law of contempt: laws that are administered and interpreted solely and finally by the judges themselves”.

FAKE JUSTICE DELIVERY

CJI assigns every important case to selected few judges and raised serious doubts on the functioning of the Supreme Court under his leadership. As CJI Dipak Mishra was being controlled from outside and was allocating cases to judges with political bias. In most of the cases, the best evidence is withheld, crucial witnesses were not cross-examined and that dozens of witnesses turned hostile. Some judges do not turn up on time, some wrap up hearings early and leave through the official timings of the court are from 10.30 to 4 with an hour’s lunch break in between, and some do not read their files before coming to court, sensitive and important cases are being heard by the junior judges in the apex court, all these are the reasons behind fake justice delivery.

PREVENTION FROM MISUSE OF POWERS, JUDGES RESPONSIBILITY, AND THEIR ETHICAL STANDARD

Preventing the government from entering and indulging into the matters of the judicial committee is the only way to control misuse of powers by judges as government is the only person who misguides judges and trying to divert the mind of judges to give favorable judgments and slowly by this process he wants to bring judiciary in his own hand.

CONCLUSION

• There is a need for an independent body which can be free from judicial and executive interference because the existing system to probe and misconduct by judges or politicians as government wants to hijack judiciary and trying with various methods so that independent pillar of judiciary can easily fall down all these methods by judge and politicians have proved to be ineffective.
• Corruption and decline now creeping into the vitals of the Higher Courts the urgent need to arrest this trend.
• We have to try different measures to root out ‘judicial corruption’ and misuse of their powers
• The role of media in India in highlighting judicial corruption in the higher judiciary has drawn a blank so it is the lawyers who have to do it because if once people lost respect in the judiciary,  democracy won’t survive, for the good of the institution (the judiciary) and for their cleansing effect.