“Not just a deeper probe, but the Supreme Court should make all facts of the probe public. The people of this country have the right to know what happens at the highest level of Indian judiciary. There is a pressing need to expose the facts of the case. If the judge is guilty, it should be made public. If the money was planted at his residence that should also come to light,” Kolse-Patil told The Indian Express.
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“I have heard that the Supreme Court has directed the committee to submit its report after collecting all the facts and details of the case. All these facts are likely to uploaded on the Supreme Court website. This is mandatory,” said Kolse-Patil.
The former judge said,”If it is established that the cash recovery points out to the role of the judge, then the faith of the citizens on judiciary will take a huge beating. This is because the citizens treat judiciary as their God, their parents.”
Kolse-Patil said when he was the judge more than two decades back, corruption in judiciary was 5-10 per cent.
“But of late or especially in last 10 years, I get to hear from close associates that corruption has increase manifold. Once when I was at a function in Pune, the then State Assembly speaker said corruption has reached the doorstep of the judiciary. When my turn came to speak, I said, corruption has already entered the judiciary… After years, I am forced to say that corruption seems to have engulfed the judiciary,” he said.
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Kolse-Patil said if the Supreme Court holds a deeper probe into the current case, it will go a long way in putting brakes on corruption in the judiciary at all levels.
“After the probe, the Supreme Court needs to take stringent possible action which will send out strong signals at all levels of the judiciary. We need a strong action from the Supreme Court to help maintain public faith in the system. The onus is on the apex court to ensure that public faith is not eroded in our judicial system which is the last hope of our citizens, no matter which strata of the society they are from,” he said.
Kolse-Patil said the Supreme Court collegium should also act tough in the matters of appointment of judges. ”The collegium should not allow itself to be dictated by the ruling party. After the SC collegium recommends names of judges for appointment, the government can only seek reconsideration of the names. If the government disapproves of certain judges, then the collegium should again send the names to the government which then has no right to reject them,” he said.
Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades.
Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives.
Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees.
During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa.
Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died.
Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More
