http://www.indianexpress.com/news/8-cjis-corrupt-exlaw-minister-to-sc/682677/0
Octogenarian lawyer and former law minister Shanti Bhushan on Thursday “publicly stated” that of the last 16 Chief Justices of India, eight were “definitely corrupt”, and went on to urge the Supreme Court to send him to jail for “contempt”. Bhushan declared this in an application filed on Thursday seeking to implead himself in an ongoing legal action against his son Prashant Bhushan, also a lawyer, for making in a media interview allegedly contemptuous statements against the integrity of SC judges, including questioning the past judicial conduct of Justice S H Kapadia, currently Chief Justice of India, in the Vedanta case. Shanti Bhushan’s application follows a decision by a three-judge Special Bench, led by Justice Altamas Kabir, recently to go ahead with the contempt action against Prashant Bhushan despite the latter explaining to the Bench that he holds Justice Kapadia to be a “judge of financial integrity”. Defending Prashant’s statements, Shanti Bhushan, who was law minister in the Morarji Desai Cabinet, challenged that his own public statement that “out of the last 16 Chief Justices of India, eight of them are definitely corrupt” in today’s application would make him, along with Prashant, liable for contempt. He asked the apex court to try him along with Prashant so that “he (Shanti) is also suitably punished for this contempt”. “The applicant (Shanti) would consider it a great honour to spend time in jail for making an effort to get for the people of India an honest and clean judiciary,” the senior advocate claimed in his application. “The applicant submits that since the questions arising in this case affects the judiciary as a whole, the petition needs to be decided by the entire court and not merely by three judges handpicked by a Chief Justice,” he demanded. Shanti Bhushan has filed a sealed envelope the names of 16 judges, out of which he is of the “opinion that eight were definitely corrupt, six were definitely honest and about the remaining two, a definite opinion cannot be expressed whether they were honest or corrupt”. The list of 16 CJIs, according to the application, starts with Justice Ranganath Mishra through to Justice Y K Sabharwal. The application says there is a “common perception” that judiciary uses the power of contempt to silence anyone trying to bring judicial corruption into the public domain. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send an email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB.
