In the name of the law

The right to information is universal and judges cannot be exempt from public scrutiny
The citizen is understandably disturbed when he sees conflict between the judiciary and Parliament or the government. The latest in the recent series is particularly worrisome. It affects the people’s right to know, embodied in the Right to Information Act, 2005.
The Chief Justice of India KG Balakrishnan told the media on April 19 that the “CJI is not a public servant in the strict sense. He is a constitutional functionary and constitutional authorities are not covered under the RTI.” A fortnight later, on May 5, he accepted that the CJI is indeed a public servant, but argued that he is not a public authority under the RTI. He overlooked, however, that if India’s lawmakers considered judges as public servants for over a century, they would not conceivably have excluded them from the category of public authority in this day and age. The record establishes that.
To begin with, one of the most important and oldest laws, the Indian Penal Code of 1860 says, in section 21, that the words ‘public servant’ include every judge. For good measure, it adds an explanation which clarifies that the persons it lists ‘are public servants, whether appointed by the government or not’.
Around Independence, the Prevention of Corruption act, 1947, took over the IPC’s definition of ‘public servant’. The Prevention of Corruption Act, 1988, likewise defines him to include ‘any judge’. The Supreme Court endorsed this in 1991 in the case of the former chief justice of the Madras High Court, K Veeraswami. It categorically rejected his plea that judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts are not within the purview of the Prevention of Corruption act.
AG Noorani
Tuesday, May 06, 2008 20:47 IST
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