Judicial independence is a basic feature of the Constitution, but independence without accountability risks becoming institutional opacity. Examine.

Independence means freedom from interference in deciding cases.

Accountability means answerability for how that freedom is exercised. The two are not in conflict but complement each other.

The mechanisms of judicial independence

• Security of tenure — Articles 124(2) and 217(1):
  • Supreme Court judges hold office until the age of 65; High Court judges until 62.
  • Removal requires a Presidential address supported by a special majority in both Houses under the Judges Inquiry Act (1968)
  • a procedure so demanding that no judge of the Supreme Court or High Court has been successfully impeached since independence.

Financial independence — Article 125 and the Consolidated Fund

• Salaries, allowances, and pensions of SC judges are charged to the Consolidated Fund of India — not subject to Parliamentary vote
• It cannot be reduced to the disadvantage of a judge after appointment (Art. 125(2)). 3. Collegium system — judicial selfselection as independence Insulation of proceedings — Articles 121 and 122
• Parliamentary discussion of the conduct of SC or HC judges in the discharge of their duties is constitutionally prohibited (Art. 121).

Courts' proceedings cannot be questioned in any court (Art. 122).

These provisions create a zone of institutional insulation around both judicial conduct and parliamentary oversight — protecting the judiciary's deliberative space from political intrusion.

• Appointment Process
  • Third Judges Case (Presidential Reference, 1998) established that the CJI and four senior-most SC judges collectively control judicial appointments, transfers, and elevations without executive veto.

Where accountability is missing "accountability to no one but itself."

• Collegium opacity (self-selection without criteria or transparency):

The ICJ's 2025 report on India's judiciary flagged that the Collegium operates without published eligibility criteria

• without open advertisement of vacancies, and without a structured competency framework, compromised diversity.
• Removal: constitutional process is too difficult, in house mechanism unused:
  • The Judges Inquiry Act (1968) requires 100 Lok Sabha or 50 Rajya Sabha signatures, a three-member inquiry committee, and a twothirds majority in both Houses — a procedural threshold so high that no judge independence.
  • has been successfully impeached since

The in-house procedure (complaints to the CJI) lacks statutory backing, operates opaquely, and has no external oversight.

• No legislative mechanism to enforce accountability: The proposed Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill (2010) which would have created an external oversight body lapsed without passage.
• Post-retirement appointments acts as a silent conflict: formal independence of the judiciary into a functional dependence
• Between 2014 and 2024, a significant number of retired SC judges accepted appointments as Chairpersons of Tribunals, Governors, Members of Commissions, and diplomatic postings from the executive — within months of retirement.

Asset disclosure (partial and unverifiable):

• Judges of the SC and HC are required to declare their assets to the CJI but these declarations are not made public as a matter of right; their publication depends on individual judges' consent.
• The RTI does not apply to the Supreme Court in relation to information about individual judges (held in Central Public

Information Officer, SC v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal, 2019 Accountability-free transfers: punitive posting without recorded reason

• When transfers function as disciplinary tools without recorded reasons, they represent the reverse of independence: not the judiciary being free from executive pressure, but the judiciary's internal hierarchy exercising unchecked power over individual judges who have no formal grievance mechanism.

The opacity these mechanisms collectively produce is not merely an institutional embarrassment; it carries direct consequences for constitutional democracy.

The judiciary cannot be the exception to constitutional morality. The Constitution that made judicial independence a Basic Structure in Kesavananda did not make judicial unaccountability a Basic Structure.

Restructuring accountability without compromising independence

• Statutory Judicial Appointments Commission (ICJ 2025 + Law
• Commission 230th Report: An independent JAC with published competency criteria, transparent shortlisting, judicial majority (preserving independence), and lay-member participation (introducing external accountability) — modelled on the UK's Judicial Appointments Commission (2005) which has demonstrably improved diversity and transparency without executive capture.
• Statutory Judicial Conduct Commission — LC 230th Report (2009):

Replace the opaque in-house procedure with a statutory body having investigative powers, a spectrum of sanctions (censure, training, suspension, referral for impeachment), and public reporting — addressing misconduct below the impeachment threshold that currently goes unaddressed entirely.

• Mandatory public asset disclosure (annual): SC and HC judges' asset declarations should be published annually on the court's website as a matter of course not conditional on individual consent; the institutional integrity argument for disclosure outweighs the privacy argument against it.
• Post-retirement cooling-off period (two years): NCRWC (2002) recommended a two-year post-retirement cooling-off period before judges may accept executive appointments, breaking the incentive structure that creates functional dependency on the executive during judicial service.
• Raise retirement age to 67–70 ( NCRWC 2002): Longer tenure reduces the frequency of vacancies (which the Collegium must fill, creating appointment pressure) and reduces the number of years in postretirement life during which executive appointments are sought, addressing the conflict structurally rather than through conduct rules alone.

The sentinel of the Constitution cannot be exempt from the Constitution's own demands of reason, transparency, and accountability. As Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer observed decades ago, justice must not only be done but must be seen to be done, a standard the current accountability architecture does not meet.