Judges accountability Bill top priority: Moily

Highlighting that the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill is first among the new laws he wants to be tabled in Parliament....

Highlighting that the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill is first among the new laws he wants to be tabled in Parliament,Union Law Minister Veerappa Moily on Sunday said the Bill will ensure that no tainted person continues as a judge.

This Bill will ensure that no person with a tainted behaviour is allowed to continue as judge. It will come up in the next session, Moily told reporters on the sidelines of a high-level consultation meeting for formulation of a National Policy and Action Plan for Enforcement of Cyber Laws held on Sunday.

The Minister said the Bill intends to give a statutory backing to the tenets of judicial values and ethics as envisaged in the May 7,1997 Full Court Resolution of the Supreme Court. The legal validity of the 1997 Resolution,which calls for judges to voluntarily disclose their personal assets and asserts on transparency in judicial functioning,has always been a controversial point,with the Supreme Court consistently maintaining that it had only a moral binding on them. This argument,however,will not hold water if the Bill gives the principles of the Resolution a statutory colour.

Talking further on the Bill,the Minister said though it will not interfere with the process of impeachment of a tainted judge,it details multiple channels of inquiry and the procedure to be followed if a judicial officer is under the scanner. Moily said removal from judicial work and withdrawal of facilities will be some of the steps taken against a judge suspected of corruption.

Noting that the Womens Reservation Bill,which guarantees 33 per cent reservation for women,is another top law on his list,he also expressed satisfaction with his proposal to release over two lakh under trials languishing in jails across the country.

On the proposal for amendments to the RTI Act,the Minister was non-committal as he said the matter was under consideration by the Department of Personnel and Training.

He said April 2010 would usher in the second generation reforms in legal education and comprehensive electoral reforms were now under contemplation kand shall be ready latest by August.