MPs in Parl panel ask why no FIR lodged in recovery of unaccounted cash at Justice Varma's house

New Delhi, Jun 24 (PTI) Several MPs at a Parliamentary panel meeting on Tuesday asked why no FIR has been lodged over the recovery of unaccounted cash from a high court judge's residence here and told the Department of Justice to prepare a detailed note on the matter, sources said.
    The MPs also demanded a code of conduct for judges, and justices in the higher judiciary should not take up government assignments till a period of five years post-retirement, they said.
    During a meeting of the Parliamentary Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice, MPs of various parties raised the issue and posed several queries to the Ministry of Law and Justice on what it was doing in the matters raised concerning the judiciary and questioned its silence on them, the sources said.
    They said the secretary in the Department of Justice, who made a presentation on 'Judicial processes and their reform' concerning issues of Code of Conduct for the judges of higher judiciary and taking up post-retirement assignments by judges, was asked to prepare a comprehensive report on the issues raised and told to present it at the next panel meeting.
    The sources add that at the request of some members, the Department of Justice was told to prepare a comprehensive bill addressing various issues and concerns on ethics and code of conduct of judges raised by them during the meeting.
    The MPs sought to know why no action had been taken on the matter concerning the recovery of unaccounted cash from the residence of Justice Yashwant Varma and demanded that a code of conduct should be in place.
    Some MPs also asked why no motion to remove Justice Varma has been moved so far. They also pointed out the Veeraswami versus Union of India judgement of 1991.
    Sources said some demanded that justice should be equitable since a government employee may lose his/her job over a small corruption issue but no action has been initiated against a senior member of the judiciary even after the recovery of unaccounted cash.
    MPs of several parties also demanded that the government should have brought a motion by now to remove the judge concerned, especially after a Supreme Court-appointed committee of judges found the recovery of cash to be true.
    After the cash recovery, Justice Varma was repatriated to his parent court -- the Allahabad High Court. He has denied the charges against him.
    The MPs also deliberated upon post-retirement assignments of judges and said they should not get such appointments till a period of five years after their retirement, which should be their "cooling off" period.
    Some MPs also said that former judges should not be appointed as MPs or to any other assignments by the President of India immediately post-retirement.
    The MPs also sought an end to the practice of relatives of judges practising in the same court which, they said, affected the administration of true justice.
    The committee of the Rajya Sabha is headed by BJP MP Brij Lal and has former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi, who is a nominated MP, former minister of state for law P P Chaudhary, TMC MPs Sukhendu Sekhar Ray and Kalyan Banerjee, Congress's Vivek Tankha, and DMK's P Wilson and A Raja as its key members.
    Former CJI Ranjan Gogoi did not attend Tuesday's meeting.
    Committee chairman Brij Lal said the meeting was convened with the agenda of judicial accountability and whether judges should accept post-retirement assignments and members discussed the two issues during the meeting today.
    He said the deliberations during the meeting cannot be made public and the panel will present its report to Parliament after completing discussions on the issues.
    The secretary of the Department of Justice, in his presentation, highlighted the restatement of values of judicial life in which he listed out the Dos and Don'ts for judges.
    One of the issues raised in the presentation was that judges must at all times be conscious that they are under public gaze and there should be no act or omission which is unbecoming of the high office they occupy and the public esteem in which that office is held.

(This story has not been edited by THE WEEK and is auto-generated from PTI)