Judicial Accountability in India: Removal, In-House Procedure and the Gaps

Most aspirants come to judicial accountability in India with one fact and one conclusion. The fact is that no judge of the Supreme Court or a High Court has ever been removed by Parliament. The conclusion is that judges answer to no one. The fact is right. The conclusion isn’t, and the space between the two is where a strong answer gets written.

Judges in India are answerable through several channels at the same time, and each channel catches a different kind of failure:

• Removal by Parliament under Article 124(4), for proved misconduct or incapacity.
• The in-house procedure, the Supreme Court’s own system for complaints against judges.
• Criminal law, since judges are public servants under the anti-corruption law.
• Transparency tools, such as the RTI Act and public asset declarations.

Each one also leaks at a different point. The case of Justice Yashwant Varma, which began with a fire in March 2025 and was still unresolved in September 2026, tested almost every channel at once, so it runs through this explainer as the worked example.

What Judicial Accountability in India Actually Means

Judicial accountability means that judges answer for how they behave in office while staying free in what they decide. A judge who gets the law wrong is corrected by a higher court. A judge who takes a bribe is a different problem altogether, and that second problem is what accountability mechanisms exist for.

It helps to separate three things that answers often blur:

• Decisional independence. This covers the content of a judgment. A wrong ruling is fixed by appeal, review or a larger bench, never by punishing the judge who wrote it.
• Conduct accountability. This covers integrity, misconduct and incapacity. It is the territory of removal by Parliament, the in-house procedure and criminal law.
• Institutional accountability. This covers how the courts are run: case allocation, appointments and delay. The question here is less “who is guilty” and more “who explains and who fixes”. The case backlog is the biggest example, covered in our note on India’s judicial pendency crisis.

A cricket umpire is a fair comparison. A doubtful LBW call goes to review, and nobody sacks the umpire for it. An umpire caught fixing a match is removed. The comparison holds on the split between error and misconduct. It breaks on speed: a cricket board can drop an umpire within a week, while removing a judge needs a special majority in both Houses of Parliament, and that slowness is deliberate.

So the real test of the system is simple. When a judge misbehaves, does the misconduct get found, recorded and acted on? Every section below applies that test.

The Constitutional Design: Hard to Remove, on Purpose

The Constitution protects judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts with a removal process that is deliberately difficult and a near-ban on legislatures discussing their conduct. That shield is aimed at pressure from governments and majorities. It is also what makes accountability hard. The core text is Article 124(4):

“A Judge of the Supreme Court shall not be removed from his office except by an order of the President passed after an address by each House of Parliament supported by a majority of the total membership of that House and by a majority of not less than two-thirds of the members of that House present and voting has been presented to the President in the same session for such removal on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity.”

Article 124(4), Constitution of India

The provisions around it matter just as much:

• Article 124(5): Parliament may regulate the procedure for the address and for investigating and proving misbehaviour or incapacity by law. It did so through the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968.
• Article 217(1)(b) and Article 218: the same removal procedure applies to High Court judges.
• Article 121: Parliament cannot discuss the conduct of a Supreme Court or High Court judge in the discharge of duties, except on a motion for the judge’s removal.
• Article 211: a state legislature cannot discuss that conduct at all.
• Articles 129 and 215: the Supreme Court and every High Court are courts of record with the power to punish for contempt of themselves.
• Article 235: control over district courts and the subordinate judiciary vests in the High Court, which is why discipline of trial judges is an internal High Court matter and not Parliament’s.
• Article 124(2)(a) and Article 217(1)(a): a judge may resign by writing to the President. Keep this one in mind, because it turns out to be the biggest leak in the system.

How Removal Works Under the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968

The 1968 Act turns Article 124(4) into a sequence with two filters: a presiding officer who can refuse the motion at the door, and an expert committee whose “not guilty” finding ends the matter. Here is the full path, with the section for each step. For every past motion in detail, see our note on the removal of judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts.

1. Notice of motion. It must be signed by at least 100 Lok Sabha members or at least 50 Rajya Sabha members (Section 3(1)).
2. Admission. The Speaker or the Chairman, after consulting anyone they think fit, admits or refuses the motion. If notices are given in both Houses on the same day, a committee is formed only if both Houses admit the motion, and then jointly. If notices are given on different dates, the later one stands rejected (Section 3(2) provisos).
3. Inquiry committee. Three members: one from the Chief Justice and judges of the Supreme Court, one from the Chief Justices of the High Courts and one distinguished jurist (Section 3(2)).
4. Charges and defence. The committee frames definite charges, and the judge gets to file a written defence, cross-examine witnesses and lead evidence. Where incapacity is alleged, a medical board can examine the judge (Sections 3(3) to 3(8) and 4(1)). The committee has the powers of a civil court to summon witnesses and documents (Section 5).
5. Report. Findings on each charge go to the Speaker or Chairman and are laid before Parliament (Section 4).
6. Decision. A “not guilty” finding ends everything (Section 6(1)). A “guilty” finding sends the motion and report to the House (Section 6(2)). If each House adopts the motion by the special majority, an address goes to the President in the same session (Section 6(3)).

Notice the design. Judges and a jurist decide the facts; elected members decide the outcome. A committee finding of guilt is necessary for removal, but it is not enough.

Every Removal Attempt So Far, and What Each One Exposed

No judge of the Supreme Court or a High Court has been removed under Article 124(4). Five episodes explain why, and each one exposed a different weak joint in the process.

The Sen case repays a second look. The committee of Justice B. Sudershan Reddy, Justice T.S. Thakur and Fali S. Nariman reported on 10 September 2010 that about Rs 33.23 lakh from the sale of goods had passed through accounts he ran as a court-appointed receiver between 1993 and 1995, and was never accounted for. He had been appointed receiver as an advocate in 1984 and became a judge only on 3 December 2003. The finding of misbehaviour still stood, which tells you conduct before appointment can be the basis for removal. The Rajya Sabha vote was the first time either House of Parliament had passed a removal motion against a judge.

The Varma Case: Every Mechanism Tested at Once

The Varma episode is the first time a statutory inquiry committee finished its work and recorded findings after the judge had resigned. That single fact makes it the most important judicial accountability case since 1993. Here is the timeline, with dates:

• 14 to 15 March 2025: during a fire at his official residence at 30 Tughlaq Crescent, New Delhi, firefighters and police reported burnt and half-burnt currency notes in a storeroom. He was then a judge of the Delhi High Court.
• 22 March 2025: Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna set up an in-house committee of Justice Sheel Nagu, Justice G.S. Sandhawalia and Justice Anu Sivaraman. His judicial work was withdrawn and he was sent back to the Allahabad High Court, where the Bar Association went on an indefinite strike against the transfer.
• 3 to 8 May 2025: the in-house committee reported on 3 May. After he declined to resign, the Chief Justice forwarded the report to the President and the Prime Minister, which the Supreme Court confirmed on 8 May.
• 21 July 2025: removal notices were given in both Houses. The Rajya Sabha notice was later rejected by the Deputy Chairman.
• 7 August 2025: the Supreme Court (Justices Dipankar Datta and A.G. Masih) dismissed his challenge to the in-house process, holding that it has legal sanction and is a fact-finding inquiry, “not a removal mechanism”.
• 12 August 2025: Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla admitted the motion, signed by 146 members, and formed a committee of Justice Aravind Kumar of the Supreme Court, Chief Justice Manindra Mohan Shrivastava of the Madras High Court and senior advocate B.V. Acharya. Justice Shree Chandrashekhar, then Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court, replaced Justice Shrivastava in March 2026.
• 16 January 2026: the Supreme Court (Justices Dipankar Datta and S.C. Sharma) held that the Speaker could form the committee alone, because the joint-committee proviso applies only when the motion is admitted in both Houses.
• 9 April 2026: he withdrew from the inquiry, alleging a denial of due process, and resigned with immediate effect by letter to the President.
• 18 May 2026: the committee submitted its report to the Speaker anyway.
• 12 August 2026: the report was laid before Parliament. It found all three charges proved: unexplained currency within his official premises, failure to preserve material evidence and evasive, misleading explanations. It did not find that the cash belonged to him.

Compare this with 2011. When Justice Dinakaran resigned, the Aftab Alam committee was wound up and no finding was ever recorded. In 2026 the committee rejected the idea that a judge’s unilateral withdrawal could end a statutory inquiry, and the Speaker let it finish. The public now has a formal, evidence-based record of what happened, even if removal never follows. The system had never delivered that before.

The Judiciary’s Own Rulebook: Restatement, In-House Procedure and Transfers

Because removal is so rare, most everyday accountability for higher judges runs through rules the Supreme Court made for itself. These carry moral weight and, since 2025, clear legal standing, but none of them can remove a judge. The ethics side of these codes is covered in our note on judicial ethics and accountability; here the focus is on how they work as machinery.

Restatement of Values of Judicial Life (1997)

On 7 May 1997 the full court of the Supreme Court adopted the Restatement of Values of Judicial Life, a 16-point code for judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts. Its rules are concrete:

• A judge should not hear a case involving a family member, close relative or friend, and relatives who are lawyers should not appear before him.
• A judge should not accept gifts or hospitality except from family, close relatives and friends.
• A judge should not engage in trade, business or speculative investment, and should not seek or raise funds.
• A judge should not express views in public on political matters or on cases that are pending or likely to come up.

The same meeting adopted a second resolution: every judge would declare assets in real estate or investments, including those held by a spouse or dependents, to the Chief Justice, and the declarations would stay confidential. The Delhi High Court’s assets page reproduces that resolution.

The In-House Procedure (1999)

A committee of Justices S.C. Agrawal, A.S. Anand and S.P. Bharucha, with Chief Justices P.S. Misra and D.P. Mohapatra, drafted an in-house procedure for judges who breach these values. It reported on 31 October 1997, and the full court adopted it with amendments on 15 December 1999. For a complaint against a High Court judge, it runs like this:

1. A complaint reaches the Chief Justice of the High Court, the Chief Justice of India or the President.
2. If it isn’t frivolous and isn’t simply about the merits of a judgment, the judge’s response is sought.
3. If a deeper probe is needed, the Chief Justice of India sets up a committee of two Chief Justices of other High Courts and one High Court judge.
4. If the committee finds misconduct serious enough to justify removal, the judge is advised to resign or take voluntary retirement.
5. If the judge refuses, judicial work is withdrawn and the Chief Justice of India informs the President and the Prime Minister, sending the report.

Transfers as a Quiet Corrective

Under Article 222, the President may transfer a judge from one High Court to another, and a transfer is sometimes used as a quieter response to a complaint. The Varma case shows its limit. Sending him back to Allahabad in March 2025 moved the problem to another court, and that court’s Bar Association went on strike over it. A transfer relocates a doubt; it doesn’t resolve one.

Transparency and Criminal Law: RTI, Asset Declarations and Prosecution

Transparency is the cheapest form of accountability. It punishes no one; it simply makes conduct visible, and that alone changes behavior. Three developments matter, plus the criminal law that sits behind them.

RTI and the Chief Justice’s Office (2019)

On 13 November 2019, a five-judge Constitution Bench in CPIO, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal held that the Supreme Court, including the office of the Chief Justice of India, is a public authority under the RTI Act, 2005. It upheld the order to disclose whether judges had declared their assets to the Chief Justice, but sent the request for collegium correspondence back for fresh consideration, with third parties heard under Section 11. The principle it laid down is worth quoting in answers: judicial independence does not stand against transparency, and disclosure is decided case by case by weighing public interest.

Asset Declarations, From Confidential to Public

• 7 May 1997: judges begin declaring assets to the Chief Justice, in confidence.
• 2009 onward: after a Delhi High Court ruling, Chief Justice K.G. Balakrishnan and other judges start posting their assets online voluntarily. Take-up stays patchy: in July 2019 only 7 of the 31 sitting Supreme Court judges had declarations on the court’s website.
• 9 August 2023: the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Personnel, Public Grievances, Law and Justice recommends a law requiring Supreme Court and High Court judges to file annual property returns.
• 1 April 2025: the full court decides that judges’ asset statements will be placed on the Supreme Court website. On 5 May 2025, declarations of 21 of the 33 sitting judges go up, along with details of the appointment process and data on High Court appointments since 9 November 2022.

What is still missing is a statute. The 2025 disclosure is a decision of the court, not a legal duty, and it can be changed by a later full court.

Criminal Law and the Consultation Rule

Judges have no immunity from criminal law. In K. Veeraswami v. Union of India (25 July 1991), the Supreme Court held that judges of the High Courts and the Supreme Court are public servants under the Prevention of Corruption Act. It added a safeguard: no criminal case should be registered against such a judge without consulting the Chief Justice of India. The rule protects judges from executive harassment. It also adds one more gate.

Accountability Mechanisms at a Glance

Put together, the mechanisms of judicial accountability in India fall into formal ones, which rest on the Constitution or a statute, and informal or self-regulatory ones, which rest on the judiciary’s own resolutions and on public scrutiny. Read the last column as the “challenges” part of any answer.

Where the System Leaks

The mechanisms exist. The trouble sits at the joints between them, and the same leaks show up case after case:

• The resignation exit. Dinakaran (2011), Sen (2011) and Varma (2026) all resigned while removal proceedings were live. The Judges (Inquiry) Act has no provision requiring an inquiry to continue once a judge leaves office, and removal is the only consequence Article 124(4) provides. The US Constitution, by contrast, lets an impeachment judgment extend to “disqualification to hold and enjoy any office” (Article I, Section 3).
• Political arithmetic. The Ramaswami vote in 1993 showed that a committee’s finding of guilt can be defeated by abstention alone.
• The gatekeeper. One presiding officer decides admission. The notice against Chief Justice Dipak Misra was refused in 2018, and the Rajya Sabha notice in the Varma case was rejected in 2025, while the Lok Sabha admitted its own.
• All or nothing. Between “no action” and “removal” the Constitution offers nothing: no censure, no suspension, no fine. The in-house procedure fills the gap informally, with advice to resign and withdrawal of work.
• Contempt and criticism. Criminal contempt under Section 2(c) of the Contempt of Courts Act, 1971 covers publications that “scandalise” a court. Since the 2006 amendment, Section 13 allows truth as a defence if it is in the public interest and the plea is bona fide. The limit is real: in 2020 the Supreme Court held advocate Prashant Bhushan guilty of contempt on 14 August for two tweets and fined him Re 1 on 31 August.
• The master of the roster. On 12 January 2018, Justices J. Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B. Lokur and Kurian Joseph held a press conference questioning how sensitive cases were being allocated. On 6 July 2018, in Shanti Bhushan v. Supreme Court of India, the Court held that the Chief Justice alone is the master of the roster. Internal accountability on case allocation rests on convention, not rules.
• Post-retirement posts. Former Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi, who retired on 17 November 2019, was nominated to the Rajya Sabha on 16 March 2020. No law sets a cooling-off period for judges; the wider problem is covered in our note on the revolving door and cooling-off periods.

The resignation exit is the one to lead with in an answer, because three cases across fifteen years show the same pattern and the fix is a narrow statutory amendment.

Independence Versus Accountability: What the NJAC Case Settled

The NJAC judgment settled who appoints judges. It did not settle how judges answer for misconduct, and treating it as the last word on accountability is a common mistake. The facts first:

• The Constitution (Ninety-ninth Amendment) Act, 2014 created a National Judicial Appointments Commission of the Chief Justice of India, the two senior-most Supreme Court judges, the Union Law Minister and two eminent persons.
• On 16 October 2015, in Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association v. Union of India, a five-judge bench struck down the amendment and the NJAC by 4 to 1, holding that primacy of the judiciary in appointments is part of judicial independence.
• Justice J. Chelameswar dissented and upheld the amendment, arguing that the judiciary is not the only constitutional organ capable of protecting citizens’ liberties.

The failed statutory route is the other half of the story. The Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, 2010 would have laid down enforceable standards, required judges to declare their assets and those of their spouse and children, and set up a National Judicial Oversight Committee able to issue advisories or warnings and recommend removal. Critics worried that non-judges on the oversight body could compromise independence. It passed the Lok Sabha on 29 March 2012 and lapsed, and it has not been revived.

Here is the honest reading. Independence is a strong argument against executive control over judges, which is what the NJAC majority feared. It is not an argument against a judge-led statutory body with graded penalties and public findings. Keep appointments and conduct in separate boxes and your answer will be sharper than most. The appointments debate itself is covered in our note on the collegium, the NJAC and the search for balance, and the wider tension in judiciary versus executive and the separation of powers.

Reforms That Would Close the Gaps

If one reform had to come first, it should be an amendment to the Judges (Inquiry) Act so that an inquiry continues and its findings are recorded even after a judge resigns. The Varma committee showed it can be done; the law should make it the rule rather than a matter of the Speaker’s choice. After that, these proposals follow from the leaks above:

• Graded sanctions through a statutory standards body with a judicial majority, so that misconduct short of removal can still be named and penalized. The 2010 Bill is a starting template, redesigned to answer the independence objection.
• Asset disclosure by law for Supreme Court and High Court judges, as the parliamentary standing committee recommended in 2023, with a verification mechanism.
• A cooling-off period before retired judges take government posts or nominated seats.
• Published criteria and real reasons for collegium decisions. The collegium began publishing its resolutions in October 2017, but a 2022 review of resolutions from 2018 and 2019 found the stated reasons too thin to show why a candidate was chosen.
• Written roster rules, so that allocation of cases stops depending on one office and on convention.
• Time-bound trials in criminal cases involving judges, since a 17-year trial serves neither the accused judge nor the public.

These are proposals, not law. Present them as such, and tie each one to the case that shows why it is needed.

How to Study This Topic

This topic looks sprawling, but it rests on a small set of texts and five cases. Learn them in this order:

1. The constitutional text. Articles 121, 124(4) and 124(5), 211, 217, 218, 222, 235, 129 and 215. Make a one-page table of what each does.
2. The six steps of the 1968 Act, including the 100 and 50 signature thresholds and the composition of the committee.
3. The five removal episodes in the table above, with one lesson each.
4. The Varma timeline, which you should update with the final outcome when Parliament acts.
5. The judge-made layer: the 1997 Restatement, the 1999 in-house procedure, the 2019 RTI judgment and the 2025 asset disclosure.

For a Mains answer, a reliable structure is: why accountability is needed, the formal and informal mechanisms, the gaps with one case each, reforms, and a closing line on balancing independence. Pair this note with judicial activism, the rule of law in India and the rising power of the judiciary, because a more powerful court makes the accountability question sharper. The full subject map sits in our Indian Polity notes.

The one idea to carry out of this topic: judicial accountability in India does not suffer from a lack of mechanisms. It suffers from the lack of one mechanism that reliably produces a recorded finding and a proportionate consequence. Back that sentence with Ramaswami, Sen and Varma, and your answer will carry both the law and the evidence.

Frequently Asked Questions

Practice Questions

Prelims MCQs

1. With reference to the removal of a Supreme Court judge under Article 124(4), which one of the following is correct? (a) A simple majority of members present and voting in each House is enough (b) The address must be supported in each House by a majority of its total membership and two-thirds of members present and voting, and presented in the same session (c) Only the Lok Sabha votes on the motion (d) The President may remove a judge on the advice of the Chief Justice of India Answer: (b) Article 124(4) requires the special majority in each House and presentation to the President in the same session.
2. Under the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, a notice of motion for the removal of a judge must be signed by at least: (a) 50 Lok Sabha members or 100 Rajya Sabha members (b) 100 Lok Sabha members or 50 Rajya Sabha members (c) 100 members of each House (d) one-tenth of the total membership of either House Answer: (b) Section 3(1) sets the threshold at 100 members for the Lok Sabha and 50 for the Rajya Sabha.
3. Consider the following statements about the Supreme Court’s in-house procedure: 1. It was adopted by the full court in December 1999. 2. It empowers the Chief Justice of India to remove a High Court judge. 3. The Chief Justice of India can forward the inquiry report to the President and the Prime Minister. Which of the statements given above are correct? (a) 1 and 2 only (b) 2 and 3 only (c) 1 and 3 only (d) 1, 2 and 3 Answer: (c) The procedure is fact-finding; removal remains with Parliament under Article 124(4).
4. The removal motion against which of the following judges was passed by the Rajya Sabha before the judge resigned? (a) Justice V. Ramaswami (b) Justice Soumitra Sen (c) Justice P.D. Dinakaran (d) Chief Justice Dipak Misra Answer: (b) The Rajya Sabha passed it 189 to 17 on 18 August 2011, and he resigned on 1 September 2011 before the Lok Sabha could vote.
5. In CPIO, Supreme Court of India v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal (2019), the Supreme Court held that: (a) the office of the Chief Justice of India is a public authority under the RTI Act, 2005 (b) all collegium deliberations must be published in full (c) the RTI Act does not apply to the judiciary (d) asset declarations of judges are absolutely exempt from disclosure Answer: (a) The Constitution Bench held that the Supreme Court, including the Chief Justice’s office, is a public authority, with disclosure decided case by case.

Mains Practice Questions

1. Judicial independence and judicial accountability are complementary rather than opposed. Discuss with reference to the mechanisms available in India. (15 marks, 250 words)
2. Resignation has repeatedly cut short removal proceedings against judges in India. Examine this gap with reference to recent cases and suggest legislative remedies. (15 marks, 250 words)
3. Evaluate the Supreme Court’s in-house procedure as a tool of judicial accountability. (10 marks, 150 words)
4. How far have the right to information and public asset declarations improved transparency in the higher judiciary? (10 marks, 150 words)
5. Critically examine the case for a statutory body on judicial standards in India, drawing on the Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, 2010 and the NJAC judgment. (15 marks, 250 words)