New Delhi, Oct 27 Stressing the need for judicial accountability, senior advocate Kapil Sibal on Tuesday said a system that publishes almost nothing about the fate of thousands of complaints it receives cannot claim to be accountable.
He asserted that independence that is not accompanied by visible accountability eventually ceases to be trusted.
The Independent Rajya Sabha MP said the ‘Master of the Roster’ power and the allocation of cases are administrative functions that affect the substance of justice, and they cannot remain beyond reasoned explanation if the institution is to retain the confidence it requires.
“Opacity in appointment and opacity in administration are not separate problems. They are the same problem,” he said, addressing an event organised by the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms at the India International Centre (IIC) here.
Sibal pointed out that no judge of the Supreme Court or a high court has been removed under the constitutional procedure in the past 26 years.
“The motion against Justice V Ramaswami failed. Justices Dinakaran and Soumitra Sen resigned before the process could conclude.
“Resignation has become the ordinary exit when accountability becomes inconvenient,” he said.
In February 2026, Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal told the Lok Sabha that the office of the Chief Justice of India had received 8,630 complaints against sitting judges between 2016 and 2025, Sibal pointed out, and added that the figure was 1,170 in 2024 alone.
“These complaints are handled under the in-house procedure. No public account has been given of how many were examined, how many disclosed a prima facie case, and how many produced any consequence. A system that receives thousands of complaints and publishes almost nothing about their fate cannot claim to be accountable. It can only claim to be closed,” he said.
Recent episodes confirm that the problem is structural, he said.
In August 2026, a sitting Supreme Court judge wrote to the Chief Justice of India alleging corruption, nepotism, favouritism and misuse of administrative powers, including roster manipulation, by the Acting Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court, he said, adding that lawyers at both benches of that High Court protested.
“The Collegium moved swiftly to recommend a new Chief Justice from outside the State. The allegations were denied; the outcome of any inquiry, if one was held, is not in the public domain. The episode shows that even when a Supreme Court judge raises serious administrative concerns, the process remains internal and opaque,” he said.
Sibal said the independence of the judiciary is a basic feature of the Constitution and it is also a trust.
The framers did not leave the higher judiciary without a mechanism of accountability, he said.
“They made removal deliberately difficult. A judge of the Supreme Court or a High Court may be removed only by a special majority of each House of Parliament on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity.
“Articles 124(4), 217 and 218 were designed to place the judge beyond the reach of ordinary political majorities. The Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 was meant to give that constitutional command a workable procedure,” he said.
What the Constitution did not do — and what no subsequent legislation has adequately done — is to provide a credible, transparent and time-bound process for dealing with allegations that fall short of proven misbehaviour of the kind that can survive a special majority in both Houses, he said.
The in-house procedure adopted by the Supreme Court in 1999 was an attempt to fill that gap, he said.
It has remained an internal, non-statutory arrangement whose existence is known and whose working is not, he said.
A complainant who writes to the Chief Justice of India rarely learns what became of the complaint, Sibal said.
In January 2026, the Supreme Court laid down detailed guidelines for high courts on how to handle complaints against district judges, he said.
It distinguished frivolous complaints from those that disclose a prima facie case and directed that, where charges are established, firm action — including criminal prosecution in appropriate cases — should follow, Sibal said.
“Seventy-six years of no removal, thousands of unanswered complaints, internal allegations that produce no public finding, High Courts that publish almost nothing about their own disciplinary processes, and criminal cases that proceed only after retirement are not separate facts. They are one continuous record. The machinery has worked, up to a point,” he said.
It has never produced a constitutional conclusion that the citizen can see and trust, Sibal added.
Sibal also recalled that in February 2026, the Supreme Court took suo motu notice of an NCERT Class 8 textbook that discussed judicial backlog and corruption.
“It banned further printing and digital dissemination of the book and issued notices to education officials. The Court said it did not intend to stifle legitimate critique. The practical effect was the removal of a school textbook,” he pointed out.
Independence that is not accompanied by visible accountability eventually ceases to be trusted, he said.
“A judge who is answerable only to his own conscience and to an opaque internal process is not more independent. He is less trusted. And an untrusted court cannot do the work the Constitution assigns to it,” Sibal said.
The existing architecture must be reformed, not abandoned, he added.
The law should also provide that an inquiry once commenced under the Judges (Inquiry) Act continues and its findings are recorded even if the judge resigns, he said.
Resignation cannot be allowed to close the record, he added.
(PTI News)
