From judges to babus, a fight from within for transparency
A Subramani, TNN 11 November 2009, 07:03am IST
CHENNAI: By going public with details of his assets, civil servant U
Sahayam has joined an elite clique of individuals who have waged a
relentless
battle from within, and made the system more accountable and transparent.
Advocate and Right To Information (RTI) activist Subhash C Aggarwal
set off a judicial snowball by submitting an innocuous query seeking
to know whether judges of the Supreme Court were adhering to the May
7, 1997 Restatement of Values and declaring their assets regularly.
When the apex court was still in the denial mode, with the Chief
Justice of India KG Balakrishnan himself countering the
pro-declaration arguments, Justice Shylendra Kumar of the Karnataka
High Court stepped out of the ranks and declared his assets on August
24. Justice K Kannan of the Punjab and Haryana High Court did not take
long thereafter to blog his asset details. The war from within had
well and truly begun.
That the Supreme Court refused to part with any asset-related
information, that the Central Information Commission ruled that the
office of CJI too was under the ambit of the RTI Act, that in an
unprecedented act the apex court filed a writ petition before the
Delhi High Court against the information panel's ruling and that the
Delhi HC concluded that the CJI's office did come under the RTI
umbrella, is history.
The logical conclusion was reached when, on September 28, the Supreme
Court officially announced that its judges would voluntarily' declare
their assets. The disclosure was actually made on November 2.
With the last word yet to be said in the appeal proceedings before the
Delhi High Court, the journey has already proved to be long and
eventful for Aggarwal. Sagayam's battle with babus seems to have just
begun, given the fact that most of his colleagues in service are
distinctly dismissive and reluctant to disclose. While the judiciary
is done with its share of denials and protestations, the state
bureaucrats have embarked on the journey only now.
Just compare the situations in Tamil Nadu and Uttar Pradesh. The Tamil
Nadu bureaucracy is not ready to join the transparency bandwagon, but
the Madras High Court is all set to declare the assets and liability
details of its judges on November 15. (In fact, Justice K Chandru
submitted his details to Chief Justice HL Gokhale on Monday).
In Uttar Pradesh, a section of IAS officers serving in the state have
already made public their asset details, whereas the 100-odd judges of
the Allahabad High Court have adopted a resolution not to make public
their asset details !
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@i$#w@ry@!
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