The following is an excerpt from senior advocate and Congress’s Rajya Sabha MP Kapil Sibal’s speech on the accountability of judges of the Supreme Court and high courts at an event by the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms (CJAR) at the India International Centre in New Delhi. The Wire was the media partner for the event.§Respected members of the Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms, colleagues at the Bar, friends, ladies and gentlemen,I have spent the greater part of my professional life arguing before the courts whose accountability we are here to examine. That experience does not entitle me to a privileged view. It does, however, impose a duty of candour. The independence of the judiciary is a basic feature of the Constitution. It is also a trust. Independence without accountability is insulation. Accountability without independence is subordination. We have protected the first with great care. We have neglected the second. That neglect is now visible to the citizen.The framers did not leave the higher judiciary without a mechanism of accountability. They made removal deliberately difficult. A judge of the Supreme Court or a High Court may be removed only by a special majority of each House of Parliament on the ground of proved misbehaviour or incapacity. Articles 124(4), 217 and 218 were designed to place the judge beyond the reach of ordinary political majorities. The Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 was meant to give that constitutional command a workable procedure.What the Constitution did not do – and what no subsequent legislation has adequately done – is to provide a credible, transparent and time-bound process for dealing with allegations that fall short of proved misbehaviour of the kind that can survive a special majority in both Houses. The in-house procedure adopted by the Supreme Court in 1999 was an attempt to fill that gap. It has remained an internal, non-statutory arrangement whose existence is known and whose working is not. A complainant who writes to the Chief Justice of India rarely learns what became of the complaint. The public almost never does.The Restatement of Values of Judicial Life, adopted in 1997, sets out the ethical standard expected of judges. It has never been supported by a transparent mechanism of enforcement that the citizen can see.In the past 76 years, no judge of the Supreme Court or a High Court has been removed under the constitutional procedure. The motion against Justice V. Ramaswami failed. Justices Dinakaran and Soumitra Sen resigned before the process could conclude. Resignation has become the ordinary exit when accountability becomes inconvenient.In February 2026, the Law Minister told the Lok Sabha that the office of the Chief Justice of India had received 8,630 complaints against sitting judges between 2016 and 2025. In 2024 alone the figure was 1,170. These complaints are handled under the in-house procedure. No public account has been given of how many were examined, how many disclosed a prima facie case, and how many produced any consequence. A system that receives thousands of complaints and publishes almost nothing about their fate cannot claim to be accountable. It can only claim to be closed.Recent episodes confirm that the problem is structural. In August 2026 a sitting Supreme Court judge wrote to the Chief Justice of India alleging corruption, nepotism, favouritism and misuse of administrative powers, including roster manipulation, by the Acting Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court. Lawyers at both benches of that High Court protested. The Collegium moved swiftly to recommend a new Chief Justice from outside the State. The allegations were denied; the outcome of any inquiry, if one was held, is not in the public domain. The episode shows that even when a Supreme Court judge raises serious administrative concerns, the process remains internal and opaque.A transparency index released in August 2026 by the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy found that almost no High Court publishes a code of conduct for its judges, discloses the procedure for complaints, or reports the outcome of any inquiry. Twenty-three of twenty-five High Courts scored zero on the disclosure of sanctions imposed on judges.The contrast with the district judiciary is instructive. In January 2026 the Supreme Court laid down detailed guidelines for High Courts on how to handle complaints against district judges. It distinguished frivolous complaints from those that disclose a prima facie case and directed that, where charges are established, firm action – including criminal prosecution in appropriate cases – should follow. The higher judiciary has prescribed a clear process for the district courts. It has not applied a comparable standard of transparency and consequence to itself.The limitations of the process while a judge is in office are also visible after retirement. In October 2026 the Supreme Court transferred the trial of a disproportionate assets case against a retired Allahabad High Court judge from Lucknow to Delhi, where a related CBI corruption case against him is already pending. The allegations concern events during his tenure. Criminal proceedings after retirement are possible; they do not substitute for a transparent and effective mechanism of accountability while the judge holds office.Seventy-six years of no removal, thousands of unanswered complaints, internal allegations that produce no public finding, High Courts that publish almost nothing about their own disciplinary processes, and criminal cases that proceed only after retirement are not separate facts. They are one continuous record. The machinery has worked, up to a point. It has never produced a constitutional conclusion that the citizen can see and trust.In February 2026 the Supreme Court took suo motu notice of an NCERT Class 8 textbook that discussed judicial backlog and corruption. It banned further printing and digital dissemination of the book and issued notices to education officials. The Court said it did not intend to stifle legitimate critique. The practical effect was the removal of a school textbook.In September 2026, in the Ram Jethmalani Memorial Lecture, Chief Justice of India stated that the judiciary cannot seek the confidence of the public by placing itself beyond scrutiny, and that fair, informed and constructive criticism is a legitimate and necessary feature of a constitutional democracy. He referred to the Court’s own order in the NCERT matter while affirming the need for openness. The words are correct. The sequence – ban followed by an affirmation of the right to criticise – shows how hard the institution still finds it to distinguish necessary scrutiny from an attack upon its dignity.The recent issuance of contempt notices for remarks directed at the Chief Justice of India and the functioning of the courts only sharpens the question. The contempt power exists to protect the administration of justice. It does not exist to place the institution beyond examination of its own practices. A court that claims the right to scrutinise every other institution must accept that it, too, will be scrutinised.Accountability does not begin after a judge takes office. It begins with how he is chosen. The collegium system was created by judicial interpretation to protect independence from executive interference. Those of us who argued for that interpretation in the Second Judges Case did so because the alternative then available was worse. Experience has shown that the remedy has developed its own defects. The process remains opaque. Criteria are not published. Reasons for recommendation or rejection are not disclosed in any form that permits public understanding. The influence of post-retirement appointments and of transfers on judicial behaviour is a matter of common observation at the Bar.The Master of the Roster power and the allocation of cases are administrative functions that affect the substance of justice. They cannot remain beyond reasoned explanation if the institution is to retain the confidence it requires. Opacity in appointment and opacity in administration are not separate problems. They are the same problem.The judiciary possesses neither the purse nor the sword. Its authority rests on public faith. That faith is not an abstract resource. It is the only foundation upon which the Court can protect the citizen’s liberty and enforce the Constitution against the State. When the public sees thousands of complaints with no published outcome, a judge resigning after charges are found proved, a textbook banned for discussing judicial shortcomings, and an appointment process that remains closed, faith erodes. Once it erodes, the last institutional check upon concentrated power stands on uncertain ground.Independence that is not accompanied by visible accountability eventually ceases to be trusted. A judge who is answerable only to his own conscience and to an opaque internal process is not more independent. He is less trusted. And an untrusted court cannot do the work the Constitution assigns to it.The existing architecture must be reformed, not abandoned.The in-house procedure must be placed on a statutory footing, with fixed timelines and a duty to inform the complainant of the outcome in appropriate cases. A permanent body with a judicial majority, but including independent members from the Bar, can inquire into serious allegations while preserving the constitutional protection against easy removal. The law should also provide that an inquiry once commenced under the Judges (Inquiry) Act continues and its findings are recorded even if the judge resigns. Resignation cannot be allowed to close the record.The collegium must publish the criteria it applies and the reasons for its decisions in a form that does not compromise privacy. Asset declarations should be mandatory, annual and subject to independent verification. Post-retirement appointments should be governed by a cooling-off period or by a process that does not leave the decision solely with the executive the judge has recently reviewed.Constructive criticism of judgments and of institutional practice must be distinguished from scandal. The profession has a role in maintaining that distinction. The institution itself must accept that scrutiny. It is the price of the authority it claims.I have argued before these courts long enough to know that the quality of judicial reasoning in individual cases is often high. The problem is not the absence of able judges. It is the absence of a system that makes the institution answerable for the power it exercises. That power is held in trust. The trust is not strengthened by opacity. It is strengthened by the willingness to be examined.The Campaign for Judicial Accountability and Reforms has consistently raised this point even when it was inconvenient. The Bar must continue to do so. An independent judiciary that cannot account for itself will, in time, find that the independence it claims is no longer accepted by those whose rights it is meant to protect.The people entrust their rights, and the Constitution that protects them, to the courts. The courts must show that the trust reposed in them is met not only by the quality of their judgments but by the integrity and openness of the institution that delivers them.