A crisis of accountability in the judiciary

With the Justice Prashant Kumar saga exposing the fault lines, the Supreme Court and the high courts must set their houses in order

In 2023, a petitioner approached the Allahabad High Court seeking the recovery of overdue payments due to them from a textile firm.

Ordinarily, the case would have followed a similar course as that of nearly 44 lakh pending civil cases in India. However, the decision of Justice Prashant Kumar to allow criminal proceedings against the textile firm sparked a series of actions, which ultimately exposed the inherent crisis in the Indian judiciary: Who is truly at fault for wrong decisions and how can accountability be imposed?

The Supreme Court routinely deals with appeals challenging the validity
of orders from the High Courts. On a daily basis, many orders are passed that often overturn High Court decisions on the grounds of incorrect application of law or facts.

However, this instance saw Justices J B Pardiwala and R Mahadevan going above and beyond to reprimand the High Court judge, directing the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court to ensure that Justice Kumar would only be allowed to hear non-criminal matters and in the presence of a senior judge on the bench.

Naturally, the decision incited protests from the Allahabad High Court, which saw the penalties as a curtailment of their independent administrative authority, and the Supreme Court has since walked back its order on penalties while continuing to maintain its deprecation of Justice Kumar’s decision. The saga, however, only exposes what has come to be a worrying feature of the Indian judiciary - the tensions in exercising administrative authority.

Article 141 of the Constitution establishes jurisprudential superintendence of the Supreme Court over all other courts. However, the Constitution does not confer a similar administrative superintendence. Article 145 states that the Supreme Court shall make rules regarding its own practice and procedure and Article 225 confers similar power upon High Courts.

In practice, the Chief Justice of India and the Chief Justices of the High Courts have untrammelled power to decide administrative issues regarding the Supreme Court and their respective High Courts, particularly in the absence of codified rules or guidelines.

Notably, these “Masters of the Roster” have the power to decide which judges shall hear which cases. In some instances, this power may be visibly misused. For example, the judges’ conference in 2019, where four then-judges of the Supreme Court publicly aired their grievances against the manner in which the roster was decided by the then-Chief Justice of India, is a striking example of how unchecked administrative control can lead to internal fault lines being put on display.

But the order passed by Justices Pardiwala and Mahadevan censuring Justice Kumar exposes an additional concern: the potential of Supreme Court judges encroaching upon the administrative powers of the Chief Justice of a HC.

Currently, all except two sitting judges of the Supreme Court have been elevated from the High Court benches, and were often Chief Justices themselves.

As High Court judges and Chief Justices, they dealt with lakhs of cases that came up on appeal from the district judiciary, and which were required to be overturned at the High Courts for erroneous applications of law.

Plenty of HC and SC judges have often expressed dismay at shortcomings in district court judgements. However, public reprimands of the nature imposed in this instance are rare. One could argue that HC judges would be required to face more scrutiny by virtue of their status as courts of appeal from the district courts. However, the administrative hierarchy in India does not permit direct interventions from the SC to correct this gap.

This is not to say that the only accountability that may be imposed for wrong decisions is judicial correction upon appeal. The responsibility lies with the HCs to ensure that such instances do not arise.

Other judges of the Allahabad High Court, who signed a petition to the Chief Justice seeking that the Supreme Court’s censuring of Justice Kumar did not take effect, recognised the administrative overreach of the decision; however, the underlying legal issues highlighted by the Supreme Court cannot be simultaneously brushed aside.

One of the administrative areas within the control of the High Courts is the need for continuous training for judges. However, in practice, judges at the High Court level do not receive regular training or forums for peer discussion and introspection. A possible solution - which would centre the need for improving judicial application of mind and removing the possibility of such wrongful orders while safeguarding the administrative independence of the High Courts - would be to institute periodic training programmes, helping judges analyse cases, share feedback and consolidate their legal and practical knowledge.

Requiring a High Court judge to be effectively supervised by a senior judge on the bench is naturally unpalatable to judges; however, the benefit of sharing knowledge and insights independently through focused discussions must also be acknowledged.

Need for a unified front

In the current instance, it fell to the Chief Justice of India to take cognisance and request a re-hearing of the matter, which Justices Pardiwala and Mahadevan have since agreed to. The judges clarified that their intention was not to supersede the administrative authority of the High Court Chief Justice, but to maintain legal standards in order to strengthen public trust in the judiciary.

For maintaining public trust in transparent and efficient justice, the Supreme Court and the High Courts cannot be at odds with each other. The pendency problem burdening the Indian judiciary continues to worsen, with multiple cases adding to its workload.

In the saga involving the Supreme Court and the High Courts, the parties to the case in question have largely been forgotten in public discourse. The petitioner’s request for overdue payments is still pending. The Indian judiciary must set its own house in order, so that the people knocking on its door ultimately receive justice.

(The writer is a senior resident fellow, Justice Access and Lowering Delays in India (JALDI) Initiative, Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy)