Over the past five years, there has been a decline in the number of Delhi High Court judges who have disclosed their assets on the official website. Presently, only 13 judges have publicly declared their assets, out of a total of 42, as opposed to 2018, when 29 judges out of 35 made such declarations.
The Delhi High Court has been a pioneer in judicial innovations, emphasising transparency in its operations. The voluntary declarations were placed in the public domain following a full court resolution at the Delhi High Court on August 8, 2009 to bring in transparency in the judiciary.
The Delhi High Court also has an archived list of 58 judges — some of whom were elevated to the Supreme Court, transferred to other High Courts, or retired — who declared their assets on the website. Some judges had already disclosed their assets as early as February 2010.
Apart from the Delhi HC, only six High Courts — the High Court of Chhattisgarh, the High Court of Himachal Pradesh, the High Court of Karnataka, the Madras High Court, the High Court of Punjab and Haryana, and the High Court of Kerala — out of the 25 in the country have had sitting judges declare their assets on their respective websites.
The High Court of Punjab and Haryana had the highest number of judges declare their assets at 31 out of a total of 56, followed closely by the High Court of Kerala, with 30 judges out of 34 declaring their assets.
According to The Hindu’s survey, only 92 out of 778 High Court judges in the country, accounting for 11.8% of the total, have voluntarily declared their assets. Details available on the websites also show that the judges do not update their assets periodically.
The official website of the Supreme Court shows only 55 former judges have declared their assets.
In August, 2023, a Parliamentary Standing Committee had released a report titled ‘Judicial Processes and their Reform’, recommending the government bring about appropriate legislation to make it mandatory for judges of the higher judiciary (the Supreme Court and the High Courts) to furnish their property returns on an annual basis to the appropriate authority.
The committee had noted that the salaries and other service conditions of Supreme Court and High Court judges were benchmarked in accordance with the salary scale of a Secretary to the Government of India.
“Service Conditions & Conduct Rules of Civil Servants stipulate mandatory filing of annual returns of assets and the same can be made applicable to judges of Supreme Court/HCs,” the committee had said.
The committee highlighted that other Constitutional authorities, including the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, were uploading their latest asset declarations on their websites under their Code of Ethics. The Council of Ministers also declares assets in accordance with the Code of Conduct for Ministers issued by the Ministry of Home Affairs.
“For the Judges of the Supreme Court of India and High Courts, there is a need to institutionalize the mechanism for regular filing of assets and uploading them in the public domain,” the committee said.
