Judiciary, the legislature and the executive are the pillars on which our democracy rests. But to suggest the judges, particularly in the higher courts, hold constitutional offices as if that invests them with extraordinary immunities does not, with due respect to judiciary, sit well with most of the people. The Right to Information Act, one is asked to believe, is not applicable. But for the judges to strike a high moral posture when asked to make a declaration of their assets etc. on assuming office is at odds with what ideally should be the norm. Politicians must make such declarations at the time of filing nominations for election to the State Assemblies or Parliament. What’s the harm if judges too make such public declarations on the day of their appointment? To suggest that they do make such declarations, but only before the Chief Justice, is diversionary. Why must a judge be afraid of making such public disclosures by taking, shelter behind their being holders of Constitutional office.

Talking of the judiciary’s uneasiness over the Right to Information Act, the RTI Act does not confer any new right. It only operationalises the existing fundamental right to free speech and expression and under Article 19 (1) (a) in which the right to know is implicit. One could seek information earlier too by filling a writ petition. The difference RTI has made is one can now proceed expeditiously under a statutory procedure.  And it is not as if we have not already witnessed some unseemly controversies involving higher judiciary in some of the High Court’s as well as the Supreme Court. The only way in which a judge could be removed is by recourse to the procedure of impeachment envisaged in the Constitution- a machinery which has remained largely unused owing to purposively designed cumbersomeness for its    mechanism.

The authority of law it is rightly said rests on the public confidence, and it is important to the stability of society that the confidence of the public should not be shaken by the baseless attacks on the integrity and impartially of judges. The immunity of judges is not but for the protection of a malicious or corrupt judge but for the public, whose interest it is that the judges should be at liberty to exercise their functions with independence and without fear of consequences. However the standards of ethical and intellectual rectitude expected of judges is directly proportional to the exalted constitutional protection they deserve to enjoy. The country is entitled to be most exacting in its prescription and expectation of the standards of rectitude in judicial conduct. What might be pardonable in an ordinary citizen or officer might in the case of a judge look indeed unpardonable. Every institution, social, political and legal, is under pressure of reassessment of its social relevance and utility. It would be on ostrich-like unrealism to be insensitive to these sweeping changes of public mood and take shelter under mere legal and constitutional protectionism.