Shanti Bhushan: Man who had courage to call CJIs corrupt
Former law minister & Senior Advocate Shanti Bhushan created a sensation in 2010 when he moved an application before the Surpeme Court accusing eight former Chief Justices of India of "corruption", and dared the court to send him to jail for committing "contempt of court".
The eight allegedly corrupt CJIs feature among a list of 16 prepared by Bhushan, comprising Justices Ranganath Mishra, K N Singh, M H Kania, L M Sharma, M N Venkatachalliah, A M Ahmadi, J S Verma, M M Punchhi, A S Anand, S P Bharucha, B N Kirpal, G B Patnaik, Rajendra Babu, R C Lahoti, V N Khare and Y K Sabharwal. Terming eight among the list as "definitely corrupt", Bhushan put their names in a sealed cover and submitted it to the Supreme Court and virtually dared it to open it and read out the contents.
He said out of the 16 on his list, "six were definitely honest and about the remaining two, a definite opinion cannot be expressed whether they were honest or corrupt".
Mr. Bhushan, who became famous by successfully arguing for setting aside the election of Indira Gandhi in 1975, triggering a chain of events leading to imposition of Emergency, resorted to dramatic action in solidarity with his son, lawyer Prashant Bhushan, who was facing contempt charges for accusing the then Chief Justice of India S H Kapadia.
Mr. Shanti Bhushan said "Make me a party along with Prashant Bhushan".
Bhushan's challenge to the SC put the Supreme court in a bind. It may be constrained not to ignore the provocation lest it start a trend.
Bhushan sought to raise for judiciary the cost of any punishment to him, by saying that he was ready to face the consequences. He said "The applicant will consider it a great honour to spend time in jail for making an effort to get for the people of India an honest and clean judiciary".
In his application, the former law minister spoke of both the growing corruption in judiciary as well as the tendency to sweep it under the carpet in the name of protecting judiciary's reputation.
He added in the application that "In fact, two former CJIs had personally told the applicant while they were in office that their immediate predecessor and immediate successor were corrupt judges. The names of these four CJIs are included in the list of corrupt CJIs".
He further added "Unless the level of corruption in the judiciary is exposed and brought in the public domain, the institutions of governance cannot be activated to take effective measures to eliminate the evil".
He went on to saying that "It is a common perception that whenever such efforts are made by anyone, the judiciary tries to target him by the use of the power to contempt. It is the reputation of the judge which is his shield against any malicious and false allegations against him. He does not need the power of contempt to protect his reputation and credibility".
Mr. Shanti Bhushan said, "Since the applicant (Shanti Bhushan) is publicly stating that out of the last 16 CJIs, eight of them were definitely corrupt, he also needs to be added as a respondent to this contempt petition so that he is also suitably punished for this contempt."
He said that corruption in judiciary had taken firm root in the last two to three decades.
Assailing the Supreme Court's decision in 1991 in the Justice Veeraswamy case restraining probe agencies from registering FIR against any judge without the permission of the CJI, Bhushan said this had resulted in total immunity to corrupt judges and caused judicial corruption to increase by leaps and bounds.