SC could disclose judges' assets to the public: What are the current standards for disclosing judges' assets?

Judges of the Supreme Court will soon make their assets publicly available. According to reports, this ruling was reached on April 1 at a full court session.

Concerns regarding corruption in India's higher judiciary have been raised by the recent discovery of substantial sums of money at the home of High Court judge Justice Yashwant Varma in New Delhi.

The case for requiring judges to reveal their assets and liabilities to the public has also been reinforced by this incident. Unlike politicians and government officials, judges are currently not required to disclose this information to the public, and they have typically opted not to.

But things might soon change.

What position has the Supreme Court taken on this matter thus far? The Supreme Court passed a resolution requiring judges to disclose their assets to the Chief Justice in 1997, at a meeting chaired by the late Justice J S Verma, who was India's Chief Justice at the time.

"Every judge should declare to the Chief Justice all assets in the form of real estate or investments held in their names, in the names of their spouses, or in the names of any other dependents," the resolution said. This resolution called for judges' assets to be disclosed only to the Chief Justice, not to the general public.

Despite the Supreme Court's 2019 ruling that judges' assets and liabilities do not qualify as "personal information," this situation still exists.

This decision was the result of a case that was started in January 2009 by Right to Information (RTI) activist Subhash Chandra Agarwal, who applied under the RTI Act to confirm whether Supreme Court judges had disclosed their assets to the Chief Justice of India as per a 1997 agreement.

Most of the nation's High Courts have resisted making their judges' financial information publicly available. The inclusion of judges' asset disclosures under the Right to Information Act was strongly opposed by the Uttarakhand High Court in a 2012 resolution.

A number of other High Courts, including those in Rajasthan, Bombay, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Gauhati, and Sikkim, provided comparable responses to this publication's RTI requests.

Given this circumstance, the Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, and Law and Justice of the Parliament suggested in 2023 that laws be passed requiring judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts to disclose their assets and liabilities. But there hasn't been any progress on this suggestion.

Is it mandatory for government employees and elected officials to reveal their assets and liabilities to the public?

In contrast to judges, public employees are usually expected to disclose their assets, and the public can usually access this information.

This endeavor has benefited greatly from the passage of the Right to Information (RTI) Act in 2005, which sought to improve accountability and transparency in government operations.

Government officials are required by the RTI Act to report their assets to their respective cadre-controlling authorities on an annual basis; the majority of this information is publicly available.

States that have strict laws requiring state-level bureaucrats to reveal their assets include Gujarat, Kerala, and Madhya Pradesh. Many times, this information is in the public domain or is accessible through RTI requests.

Union Ministers, including the Prime Minister, have been required to submit their asset declarations to the Prime Minister's Office since the UPA-2 administration (2009–2014). These declarations are currently available on the PMO's.

The Speaker of the Lok Sabha and the Chairperson of the House, respectively, must receive the asset declarations from members of Parliament. Despite not being made public, these declarations are usually accessible through RTI applications, a practice that is similar in the majority of states

Furthermore, as part of the nomination process, candidates for election to Parliament, any state Assembly, or any Council are required to publicly disclose their assets and liabilities. A 2002 Supreme Court decision is the source of this requirement. These statements are the most thorough that any public servant is required to make, and even a small mistake could disqualify a candidate from receiving the nomination