CHANDIGARH: The walkout on Aug.29, by Chief Justice M. Venkatachaliah, Supreme Court judges and Home Minister HLR. Bharadwaj from a function organized by the Punjab and Haryana ‘Court Bar Association has yet again brought into focus the nepotism rampant in the Judiciary.
The walkout was triggered when a lawyer, Anupam Gupta, in his speech, mentioned instances of Supreme Court and High Court Judges indulging in nepotism and corruption,
Justice Venkatachaliah reportedly expressed displeasure over the manner in which Gupta spoke about the decay in the judicial system. Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court S.D. Aggarwal later apologized to Venkatachaliah for the incident. After the Chief Justice and others left, Association members, who had empowered Gupta to talk on their behalf, asked him to continue with his five page written speech, which he did. Addressing Justice Venkatachaliah inessential, Gupta said: The judicial staff at the Bar include sons, daughters, son sin law, brothers and nephews of judges. Perhaps, the only close relationship that this court has not yet seen is the lawyer wife.”
Anupam Gupta referred to Sheela Barse’s case, in which she had charged the Supreme Court of having become ‘days functional. He said the concern of all lawyers was the moral and ethical foundation of justice. “The burden of my lament today is the privatization of the judicial process, he said.
He talked of the judges scramble for ministerial favors and perks and the increasing clout of the State Government and Chief Ministers over the court.
He alleged that 14 out of the 28 sitting judges of the Punjab and Haryana High Court had close relatives practicing in his court, Right out of these 14 judges had more than one relative practicing here. Wards of two sitting Supreme Court judges also practiced in this court and one of the judges had more than one ward.
He further said the relatives of the judges practicing in the Punjab and Haryana High Court enjoyed their active patronage. This, he said, included judges meeting litigants directly and setting cases on behalf of relatives and using subordinate judicial officers to procure work for their kin from the district and mofussil courts.
Besides this, he said, the mal practices included fixation of cases before convenient judges by obliging High Court bureaucracy from clients by relatives of judges.
He said there were at least seven additional, deputy and. assistant advocates general in the Punjab and Haryana High Court who had been appointed 16 these posts, because they were related to judges.
Article extracted from this publication >> September 3, 1993
