Government plans to record court proceedings to check corruption

NEW DELHI: The central government on Tuesday said that it was mulling video recording of court proceedings to check corruption in the judiciary, in a possible counterattack on an unusually proactive judiciary.


“The judiciary is the most non-transparent institution in the country,” a highly placed source in the law ministry said. The move came amid an acrimonious chapter in ties between the government and the judiciary.

The court has in recent years interfered in a number of policy areas such as telecom spectrum allocation and more recently the coal block allocations, much to the embarrassment of the government. The attack came on the eve of a crucial court hearing on coal block allocations for which the government is at the receiving end of court ire. The source said that the ministry had already written to the Delhi High Court chief justice about this.

The source also said that the government wanted to have an equal say in judicial appointments. In every other country in the world, the governments have a say in judicial appointments, the source said. The government was working to change the system but had hit a roadblock in absence of any political consensus on this, the source said.

“We should be allowed to initiate the process, give inputs,” the source said. Under the current dispensation, the judiciary can ignore the government objections to any appointment. If the court sends back a recommendation, the government has to accept it. The government also questioned the mode of appointments of senior advocates in high courts and the Supreme Court.

The government is in the dock for changing and vetting a draft status report of CBI’s probe into coal scam.

The government insists that the CBI could not have probed it without meeting the coal and PMO officials. The change in the report suggested by the officials and the vetting of the report by a former law minister prompted the court to direct the government to make the CBI independent or face court intervention to set it free of government control.