Asset declarations by Supreme Court judges is within purview of RTI

Upholding the Central Information Commission (CIC) order that office of the Chief Justice of India (CJI) is well within the ambit of the Right to Information (RTI) Act, the Delhi High Court Wednesday ruled that judges should declare their assets. In a historical judgement, Justice S. Ravindra Bhat said judges are accountable but they are also subject to some constraints. He said, “A judge is not unaccountable as is sometimes wrongly understood and is subject to several constraints. The judicial branch lacks either the ’sword or the purse’ controlled by the other two branches.” The jud...