The article by Sri. Nani Palkhivala on the deteriorating standards of judiciary is reproduced, which should cause concern all round.

World history moves in cycles. High ethical times are succeeded by low, decadent decades. Today we in India are at the nadir of moral values. The size of the crime wave and armed violence, which is so huge as to baffle criminologists, is symptomatic of our ethical degradation.

A commercial recession can be quickly transformed into a buoyant economy; but a moral recession cannot be shaken off for years. The rot in public life began after the death of Lal Bahadur Shastri and has been increasing at a galloping rate. It has spread so far as to contaminate the higher judiciary which is the soul of any democracy. Judges are the noblest servants of society; without them, its most fundamental equilibriums cannot be maintained.

The poisoning of the well-spring of justice began in 1973 when the three senior most judges of the Supreme Court, who were independent enough to decide against the executive in Kesavananda's case, were superseded upon the Chief Justice's office falling vacant. The Government expressly proclaimed that it wanted "committed" judges, committed to the idealogy of the ruling party. That began an era of a judiciary made to measure. The Government looked out for pliant judges who had no more backbone than a chocolate eclair.

Evil is more infectious than AIDS and, if unchecked, progresses with an inevitable momentum of its own. It is but one step from forsaking intellectual integrity to forsaking financial integrity. A judge who decided wrongly out of motives of self-promotion is no less corrupt than a judge who decides wrongly out of motives of financial gain.

The slide on the inclined plane has been rapid and unmistakable. In the first two decades of our republic, it was the compulsion of veracity, not the fear of law relating to contempt of court, which was responsible for the fact that no charges of corruption were levelled against the judiciary. Now the compulsion of veracity dictates such charges, in defiance of the contempt of courts Act.

It is preeminently a time for deep, national introspection. We must bury our self-esteem fifty fathoms deep, and be self-critical enough to meet the truth face to face. The Bar is more commercialised than ever before. It is against all change, specially change for the better. Today the law is looked upon, not as a learned profession but as a lucrative one. The due process of law has become less "due" than tortuous and unending.

If you lose faith in politicians, you can change them. If you lose faith in judges, you still have to live with them. The ineluctable fact is that the conduct of some judicial officers in different courts has been far from exemplary in terms of ethics.

Corruption in the upper reaches of the judiciary is illustrative of the incredible debasement of our national character. There is general public acceptance of venality everywhere as a venial idiosyncrasy. We are merely amused by the fact that the contrast between the moral tone of ancient India and that of modern India is sufficient to disprove the theory of evolution upwards!

The question is, which is the best way of dealing with a corrupt judge in the higher courts without creating a crisis of public faith in the judiciary?

The greatest illusion of our people is their infantile belief in the legal solubility of all problems. In the wise words of Lord Hailsham, the former Lord Chancellor of the UK, "We might do well to remember that in the whole realm of human relations there is no field more vulnerable to corruption, dishonesty, chicanery and sheer quackery and charlatanism than contested litigation, criminal and civil, commercial, matrimonial, testamentary or resulting from personal injury, real, imagined or invented. We might also do well to consider that few of the safeguards we have achieved against these evils have been achieved by Government interference or by parliamentary legislation. They have been brought about by the steady application of self regulatory procedures and disciplines..."

Impeachment of proceedings in Parliament, the only constitutional way of removing a judge of a High Court from his office, is a procedure not to be resorted to lightly. It is enormously cumbersome and is likely to bring political passions into play. A striking example of the malfuntioning of our democracy is afforded by the fact that the first impeachment proceeding ever sought to be started in our Parliament was that against one of our finest judges, J.C. Shah, a judge of impeccable integrity. It was a move commenced by a disgruntled, dishonest civil servant against whom Justice Shah had given a judgement in the Supreme Court, and who cunningly managed to secure as many as 199 signatures of Members of Parliament for an appeal to the Speaker of teh Lok Sabha to start impeachment proceedings against the judge. In 1993, a motion to impeach Justice V. Ramaswamy of the Supreme Court was defeated in Parliament because the Congress party issued a whip that Congress members should abstain from voting, ignoring the correct legal position that Parliament had to exercise a quasi-judicial function on an impeachment motion.

It would be ffolish as well as dangerous to relax the rigour of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 and permit truth to be pleaded as a defence when an allegation of corruption is made against a judge. Character assassination is the national sport of India, and some dissatisfied litigants and lawyers will have no hesitation in making allegations which would scandalize the court and then inviting the judge to face a public inquiry for a length of time which would make eternity intelligible.

In the past there have been sufficient instances of the executive interfering in matters pertaining to the judiciary of ulterior, ill founded reasons, to dissuade an honest law minister from establishing another precedent of intermeddling even for well-founded reasons.

Perhaps the best way of dealing with the problem is to have a law or even an unwritten convention, regarding the procedure to be followed when there are allegations of corruption against any judge. The matter should be placed confidentially before the Chief Justice of the High Court for inquiring into the case. If his view is that there is no substance in the allegations, the matter should be regarded as closed. If he thinks otherwise, the case should be referred to the Chief Justice of India and two Supreme Court judges. If the decision of the three judges(which would be final) is adverse, the errant judge may regard discretion as the better part of valour and decide not to continue on the Bench. This would be a dignified and quietly effective way of dealing with men unworthy of holding high judicial office.

Luckily, the overwhelming majority of our judges in the eighteen High Courts and the Supreme Court are men of integrity, while some of them combine character with outstanding caliber.