THE NEED FOR A JUDICIAL CODE OF CONDUCT

The latest case of a judge crossing lines of propriety is part of an alarming trend. With its 1997 code on judicial values breached, the Supreme Court needs to frame new rules

- KALEESWARAM RAJ

THe recent controversial hate speech by Justice Shekhar Kumar Yadav of the Allahabad High Court deserves to be deprecated in the strongest terms. He made open and disparaging comments against minorities. He mistook constitutional democracy for conventional democracy, and spoke as if communal majoritarianism is synonymous to democracy. The oath under the third schedule of the Constitution obliges him to uphold the integrity of India and perform his duties "without fear or favour, affection or ill-will" and also "uphold the Constitution and laws".

The text of his speech clearly negates the solemn affirmation in the oath he has taken. Thus, the nation was confronted with a scenario where a judge of a constitutional court discarded the values of the fundamental law in public. That the Chief Justice Sanjeev Khanna acted in time and called for a report on the incident is a matter of solace. Justice Yadav has also been summoned to appear before the collegium of judges at the Supreme Court.

More than an aberration by an individual judge, the incident reflects an unhealthy trend among some judges to lean towards political power centres. For them, personal agenda prevails over their assigned constitutional role. The Congress era also showed a series of such shameless abandonment of judicial constituencies in search of political or other positions. Contemporary India, too, has her bad apples.