
UPSC ETHICS UPSC UPSC™ UPSC UPSC UPSC UPSC Upsc Upsc UPSC UPSC UPSC UPSC UPSC UPSC UPSC UPSC UPSC™
June 14, 2025 at 04:14 PM
🔆 SC Judges Declare Assets Publicly (April 1, 2025):
✅ All 31 Supreme Court judges, including the Chief Justice of India, declared their assets—a move rooted in a 1997 ethics code aimed at improving judicial accountability.
📍 Background Trigger – Justice Varma Incident:
✅ The decision follows the discovery of cash at the residence of Justice Yashwant Varma, sparking concerns over judicial corruption.
📍 The 1997 Code – ‘Restatement of Values of Judicial Life’:
✅ Adopted in a full court meeting, the code outlines 16 ethical principles for judges.
✅ It aimed to reinforce public trust and institutional accountability.
✅ Key guidelines include avoiding conflicts of interest, political expression, close personal ties with lawyers, and gifts or hospitality from non-family members.
🔆 Voluntary Asset Declarations Since 2009:
✅ Judges decided to declare assets “purely on a voluntary basis.”
✅ These were published online, but updates have been irregular—only 28 of 33 judges have disclosed their assets as of the latest update.
🔆 Confidentiality and RTI Limitations:
✅ A 2019 SC ruling stated asset declarations are not “personal information” exempt from RTI queries, but the practice of confidentiality persists.
📍 Gaps in Misconduct Accountability:
✅ There’s a significant gap between misconduct and impeachable offenses—no SC judge has ever been impeached.
✅ The 1997 code addresses this gap by outlining what constitutes “bad conduct.”
📍 ‘Values of Judicial Life’ as a Disciplinary Framework:
✅ The 1997 resolution laid the foundation for an internal process to investigate judicial misconduct.
✅ Reinvoked in 2014 and 2025 for in-house inquiries, such as the sexual harassment case in 2014 and the current case involving Justice Varma.
📍 Enforcement and Transparency Challenges Remain:
✅ Although the framework for accountability exists, consistent enforcement and transparency—especially in asset disclosure—remain concerns.