Judges postings under RTI? SC decides to decide

A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court will decide if disclosing to the public the well-guarded procedure transfer.

A Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court will decide if disclosing to the public the well-guarded procedure transfer and appointment of judges to the Supreme Court and high courts under the Right to Information RTI Act is an acknowledgment of citizens right to free speech and expression or merely an invitation for needless intrusion by strangers and busybodies in the functioning of the judiciary.

A two-judge Bench led by Justice Sudershan Reddy on Friday preferred a Constitution Bench of five to seven seniormost judges of the Supreme Court to strike the right balance between the independence of the countrys judiciary and the right to free speech,greatly valued under the transparency law of 2005.

Important aspects of the most fundamental issues confronting our democracy finally arrive in the Supreme Court for judicial determination. Not infrequently,these are the issues upon which contemporary society is most deeply divided. They arouse our deepest emotions. This is one such controversy, the Bench observed in its judgment.

The case is one of its kind in which the Supreme Court appealed to itself against a Central Information Commission CIC order of November 24,2009 directing the apex court registry to give RTI activist SC Agarwal complete information about why Justices HL Dattu,AK Ganguly and RM Lodha superseded Justices AP Shah,AK Patnaik and VK Gupta to the apex court.

Agarwal wanted copies of the correspondence exchanged between the then CJI KG Balakrishnan and the Union Law Minister about the deliberations which went in to decide on the three judicial appointments. The CIC relied on a Delhi High Court decision that such disclosures were definitely in public interest.

Attorney General GE Vahanvati appeared for the Supreme Court to argue before Justice Reddys Bench that judicial appointments were essentially a discharge of constitutional trust.

The Bench wrote in its judgment that the case even raises important questions about the position of the Chief Justice of India under the Constitution. But todays judgment seems to incline more towards judicial independence,especially when the judgment says that though freedom of speech under RTI is a fundamental right,the judiciary does form the bulwark and the basic structure of the Constitution.