There is a myth about the brotherhood of judges. In India, the higher brotherhood consists of high court and Supreme Court judges. Although the Supreme Court is supreme, it is self-confessedly not infallible. Justice Reddy’s account of Keshvananda’s case is hilariously disturbing. The “right” and the “left” judges opened up in acerbic dispute. If words could wound, they did. Way back in the ‘60s, a Gujarat judge judicially declared that he was duty bound to follow the Constitution not the Supreme Court. The high court judges are bound to follow the law laid down by the Supreme Court (Article 141). But the brethren do not have to like each other. The pretence of doing so increases when high court judges have to be on their best behaviour if they want to be chief justices of high courts or on the Supreme Court. Chief justices are first amongst equals.

Public disagreement began when Justice D.V. Shylendra Kumar declared that the Chief Justice of India (CJI) could not speak for all the judges. Frankly, he was right. The judges were not individually consulted. There is no law that assets cannot be declared. The CJI probably does not even know the names of all the high court judges. True, as former CJI Verma put it, the CJI must lead, but he must lead by example. Perhaps, initially this is a case where the CJI should not have gone to the press at all especially as the issue was before Parliament and the Supreme Court itself was in litigation in respect of the Right to Information application before the courts. But the CJI is a public person and he is constantly asked questions by the press. So he answers their queries. Thus, without being controversial, he gets involved in a controversy.

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