JOIN USHe also stressed the need for improving the subordinate judiciary which is at the receiving end from different sides including the general public.
Justice H S Bedi, speaking at a function organised to mark his retirement, also wondered as to how the judges in the Supreme Court and high courts came to assess the extent of corruption in judiciary by fixing it from 20 to 80 per cent.
“This is the persistent sniping that goes at the judicial system. The criticism is sometimes justified and it has to be accepted in that spirit but I find that some of the remarks are unnecessarily sweeping and uncharitable as my experience shows that for every bad judge there are many good ones whose contributions are completely ignored,” he said.
Strong words were used against the judiciary by leaders of various political parties during the debate on the impeachment of Calcutta High Court judge Justice Soumitra Sen, who resigned on Thursday. Last month, Justice V S Sirpurkar, in his farewell function, had termed as “indigestible” some of the criticism made against the judiciary saying that no institution was immune from it in democracy.
Justice Bedi, elevated to the Supreme Court in 2007, highlighted the need for strengthening the subordinate judiciary as it was the foundation for higher courts.
“The subordinate judiciary is at the receiving end not only from the litigant, as one side has to lose, but also from the public, the politician, the media, from unscrupulous lawyers, and, more importantly, from its superiors in the judicial hierarchy,” he said.
“We have high court and Supreme Court judges making assessments about the extent of corruption in the judiciary and offering widely differing figures from 20 to 80 per cent. How they come about these figures is a mystery to me,” Justice Bedi said.