Addressing the Chief Justices Conference in Delhi recently, the Prime Minister said that Judges are considered divine, and next only to God.
I wish his words were true, but the fact is that there is massive corruption in the judiciary. How can a corrupt person be regarded as divine ?
When I started law practice in the Allahabad High Court in 1971 there was no corrupt Judge in the High Court, or perhaps in any High Court in India ( though corruption had started in the lower judiciary ). There were no doubt Judges who were courteous and those who were nasty, intelligent Judges and dull Judges, etc but no corrupt Judge in the High Courts..
In 1994 when Justice Venkatchaliah was Chief Justice of India there was transfer of a large number of High Court Judges in India on allegations of corruption, and such transfers have continued since then, even upto very recent times.
In the year 2001 or so Chief Justice of India Bharucha said that upto 20% High Court Judges had become corrupt. My guess is that the figure today may be between 40-50%.( of course there are upright Judges too ).
In the year 2010 a bench of myself and Justice Gyan Sudha Misra in Raja Khan vs. U.P.Sunni Central Waqf Board ( see online ) came down very heavily on some Judges of the Allahabad High Court by observing " Something is rotten in the Allahabad High Court ".
Mr. Shanti Bhushan, a very senior advocate of the Supreme Court, and former Union Law Minister, filed a list in writing before the Supreme Court a few years back mentioning the names of 8 of the previous 16 Chief Justices of India who were corrupt. Since then probably more names could be added to that list
