Justice denied to senior Supreme Court judge

When the senior Supreme Court judge Justice Altamas Kabir checked in at the official Kumara Krupa Guest House in Bangalore on the night of August 5, an attendant directed him to an ordinary room instead of the VVIP suite allotted to him. Justice Kabir, who had come to preside over the convocation of the prestigious National Law School University of India in his capacity as the NLSUI chancellor, had opted to stay at the state guest-house instead of at a five-star hotel.

However, the room he got at Kumara Krupa was shabby, the bedsheets were stained and the toilet-towels torn. The next morning when the matter was brought to the notice of Karnataka Chief Justice J S Kehar, the state chief secretary SV Ranganath and another senior official rushed to the guest-house and ensured that Justice Kabir was shifted to the VVIP room. But questions remain to be answered.

While four staffers, including the attendant at the reception, have been suspended, shouldn't action also be taken against those senior officials who are responsible and accountable for the behaviour of their subordinates? The other question is whether the basic standards of cleanliness should be missing from the non-VVIP rooms in state guest-houses.

This incident, coming as it does in the wake of the Lokayukta report on the major mining scam in Karnataka, further highlights the extent to which standards of administration have deteriorated. In the good old days, the then Diwan of the princely state of Mysore, Sir M Visvesvaraya, refused to use the office pen and stationery for personal work even when he was touring on official duty and staying in the state guest-houses. The region has since been transformed into India's Silicon Valley but standards of governance have sadly plummeted!