judicial standards expected of judges and requiring them to declare their assets.
111
It also proposes establishing the National Judicial Oversight Committee and a
Complaints Scrutiny Panel in the Supreme Court and in each high court to deal
with complaints of misbehaviour or incapacity against judges.
Landmark judicial decisions
Considering that the Supreme Court delivers hundreds of landmark judgments
every year, it is next to impossible to review all such decisions. Apart from some
affirmative-action cases that have already been noted above, selected cases con-
cerning corruption and environmental pollution are analysed below.
Since the mid- 1990 s, the higher judiciary has been quite active in entertaining
public-interest litigation (PIL) cases that question corruption by public servants.^112
This trend of trying to ensure good governance has continued in the twenty-first
century.^113 InParkash Singh Badalv.State of Punjab,^114 the Supreme Court ruled
that former public servants cannot avail themselves of the protection of Section 19
of the Prevention of Corruption Act 1988 , meaning thereby that no prior sanction of
the government is required to prosecute them for indulging in corruption.
In 2008 , there was a major scandal concerning the allotment of 2 G licences to
private telecom operators at a throwaway price, which has reportedly cost the
government approximately US$ 39 billion.
115
This scam has led to the arrest of
several politicians (including a union minister), bureaucrats and businessmen.
After investigations by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the Centre for
Public Interest Litigation filed a petition in the Supreme Court seeking a court-
monitored investigation by the CBI, after their PIL on this matter was dismissed by
the high court.^116 Since the government did not object to a ‘court-monitored
investigation’, the Supreme Court did not feel the need to establish a special
(^111) Bill No 136 of 2010.
(^112) S.P. Sathe,Judicial Activism in India: Transgressing Borders and Enforcing Limits(New
Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2002 ), pp. 140 – 7 , 221 – 2. The Indian Supreme Court is a busy
court. It disposed of 61 , 850 cases from May 2008 to April 2009 and 79 , 621 cases from May
2009 to April 2010 : Supreme Court of India, ‘Summary: types of matters in Supreme Court
of India’,http://supremecourtofindia.nic.in/outtoday/summary.pdf. Despite this, as of
1 November 2011 , a total of 56 , 383 cases were pending before it. Of these pending cases,
about 71 per cent were not ready for hearing on account of preliminaries being incomplete,
e.g. process fee not paid, notice not yet served.
(^113) A simple search of ‘corruption’ and ‘prevention of corruption’ of the Supreme Court
decisions delivered between 1 January 2000 and 11 December 2011 and available online
on its official website came up with 552 and 378 hits respectively. To provide context for
these numbers, it is worth noting that the term ‘sustainable development’ got only forty-
three hits during the same period. Judgment Information System of the Supreme Court,
http://judis.nic.in/supremecourt/chejudis.asp.
(^1142007) AIR 1274 :( 2007 ) 1 SCC 1.
(^115) ‘What is 2 G spectrum scam?’, NDTV, 5 May 2011 ,www.ndtv.com/article/india/what-is- 2 g-
spectrum-scam- 66418.
(^116) Arising out of SLP (C) No 24873 of 2010 (decided on 16 December 2010 ).