M A I N   N E W S

Govt proposes to bring judges under Lok Pal
S.S. Negi
Legal Correspondent

New Delhi, January 7
The UPA government today proposed to bring the judiciary, the executive and the legislature under the purview of Lok Pal. A Group of Ministers (GoM) has been set up under the leadership of Defence Minister Pranab Mukherjee to examine the Lok Pal Bill.

This was disclosed here in a press conference by Law Minister H.R. Bharadwaj. He said,“For judiciary, the provision of impeachment of a judge has ‘failed’ and the existing provision of prior sanction of the Chief Justice of India (CJI), as laid down in ‘Veeraswamy case’ by the Supreme Court, for the prosecution of a sitting judge for any ‘corruption charges or misconduct’, had not been found to be so effective.”

Citing the demand of amending the law by former CJI V.N. Khare, to give the CJI more powers to deal with ‘judicial indiscipline’, Bharadwaj said the law regarding prosecution of a sitting judge ‘is a grey area’.

Therefore, a comprehensive examination of the Lok Pal Bill to bring within its ambit the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary was needed, he said.

He, however, made it clear that the government was of the view that heads of the three wings — the President, the Prime Minister, Presiding Officers of the two Houses of Parliament, and the CJI — should not be brought under the purview of Lok Pal considering the ‘dignity attached to the Constitutional posts they hold’.

He said fresh examination of the Lok Pal Bill would be done in the light of the 1976 recommendations of the Administration Reforms Committee (ARC) and a clear law would be defined as to which would be the sanctioning authority for granting sanction of prosecution of the members of executive i.e. public servants, MPs and MLAs and the sitting judges.

“The GoM, which will have five-to-six ministers, including the Law Minister himself and Science and Technology Minister Kapil Sibal, would ‘suggest which areas had to be brought under Lok Pal and examine the inadequacy in the Bill introduced by the NDA government earlier,” Mr Bharadwaj said.

When specifically asked whether the GoM would also discuss the matter with the CJI, he replied in the negative and said, “We will prepare a report for amending the law.”

“Judiciary has not taken the matter seriously. Public outcry is so much about corruption in all three wings... the law must satisfy the public,” he said.

Asked whether the government would take care of the ‘immunity’ to MPs and MLAs against prosecution with regard to any illegality committed during the discharge of their legislative duties as was evident in the JMM bribery case as the court had let off ‘bribe taker MPs’ because of the immunity under Article 105 of the Constitution despite admitting that they had taken money for voting in Parliament in a particular manner, Bharadwaj said, “There is no question of giving immunity to anyone against violation of law.”