Rajya Sabha Floor leaders to discuss greater judicial accountability

Following the alleged discovery of sizeable cash from the official residence of Yashwant Varma, parliamentarians have expressed the need for greater judicial accountability. Rajya Sabha Chairman Jagdeep Dhankhar held a meeting with leader of the House JP Nadda and leader of the Opposition Mallikarjun Kharge on the issue and decided to hold another round with floor leaders of all parties to take a call on the next course of action.

While it is not yet clear if a legislation on the lines of the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) Act, 2014, which was quashed by the Supreme Court, is in the offing, the instant case has kickstarted a debate on ending the "opaque system of appointing judges".

After the meeting with Nadda and Kharge, Dhankhar said such malaise needs to be eradicated so that there is no recurrence of the same. He applauded CJI Sanjeev Khanna's role in the matter.


"We had meaningful deliberation about the issue that is agitating the mind of the Judiciary. It is for the first time since independence that a Chief Justice (of India) has in a transparent, accountable manner put all material available to him in public domain and shared it without keeping anything with the court... This is a step in the right direction," he said after the meeting.

Institutions like Judiciary and Legislature serve their purpose best when their in-house mechanism is effective, fast and uphold public trust, Dhankhar said, adding he has accepted Kharge's suggestion to hold discussions with floor leaders of various parties.

"Institutions must blossom only with integrity and public commitment and such kind of malaise needs to be eradicated so that we do not have a recurrence of it," Dhankhar said.

Earlier, on March 21, Congress chief whip Jairam Ramesh had raised the issue in the House. Taking the issue further, Chairman Dhankhar had recalled the 2014 legislation - he did not name the NJAC Act - which was passed with just one abstention and no dissension and approved by 16 state assemblies. The President of India had given assent to it under Article 111.

However, when ET talked to some political leaders on the need for bringing such a legislation again, a few of them appeared ambivalent.