New Delhi: Senior advocate and MP Kapil Sibal has said that the documents of the cash-at-judge domestic matter should not have been made public until the ongoing “in-house” investigation is completed. No matter what the result of the case is, the disclosure of the documents of the case makes it a “zero-zero game” for the judiciary, he said.
Sibal, president of the Supreme Court Bar Association, said, “I am completely against the gag order, but it was an ideal case where there should have been a gag order, saying that we would not allow all this to be in the public domain, until our in-house process is over, it is okay? Because you are working with an institution,” Supreme Court Bar Association President Sibal said in an interview.
“Publicly, nothing should have been released … you cannot release anything-especially when it comes out of the judiciary because people immediately believe in it-and then there is an in-house check. In-house investigation should be done first, and then, if you come to a conclusion that something is wrong, a release should be,” he said.
On March 24 this year, the Supreme Court uploaded a video of a large amount of cash search at the residence of Justice Yashwant Verma, a Delhi High Court Judge, on its official website, in an unprecedented step, and on its official website. After a fire in his premises on March 14, the authorities allegedly discovered cash in a storeroom, with the judiciary, later, the scam was facing heat.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cmyqudhbb
Suggestion that because the matter’s documents were made public, the judiciary would continue to face the heat, even if the investigation eventually proved to be the innocence of the judge, Sibal said, ” [case] Autakam is a zero-zero game for the judiciary … if nothing is really found, it’s fine-and he is one of our best judges; Apparently, we have never heard anything negative about man – if nothing is found, the public will say that you have protected him; You have covered the incident. ,
The Rajya Sabha MP said, “If you move forward with the matter, every litigator, when he loses a case, would say that the judge was given money. Therefore, it is a zero-zodiac game,” said the Rajya Sabha MP.
Asked how judicial accountability should be fixed in the background of the judge’s house and the cash found in the Supreme Court, Sibal said that the hour needs were putting the “institutional system” in place, “not an ad hoc reaction to the situation”.
Sibal said: “The institutional system means that you have to install procedures. See, when you talk about the judiciary, we are not talking about some normal person, ok [that] You have complete proof; You should not disturb the judge. ,
Advocate said that the inquiry mechanism should be prepared after discussion with the Bar Association.
“You need to be an institutional mechanism, which you have to implement after discussion with the bar, and must have a constant conversation because we can tell the bar what it does not know, and it can tell us the things that we do not know. It will be a collaborative practice because we want to really want to deal with a bad penny; because a bad money can give a bad name to the institute. [judiciary]We do not want this to happen because this is our life, ”he said.
Sibal, however, dismissed that the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) was the answer to the judicial accountability.
A constitutional bench of the Supreme Court, in 2015, declared NJAC unconstitutional, while ruled in favor of continuing the collegium system.
Sibal said, “I definitely believe that NJAC is not a solution.
Talking about the selection of the judge, he said, “The government should be represented in the selection of judges; but the government should not have control the selection of judges; Therefore, you should have a wide-based selection process.”
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)
Also read: ‘Modi government controls every aspect of our life’ – Kapil Sibal in Sam Pitroda Book Launch