The Supreme Court of India told the Delhi high court on April 1 that it does not maintain judge-specific information on corruption or misconduct complaints. The submission was made by Advocate Rukhmini Bobde, appearing for the Supreme Court’s public information officer, before Justice Purushaindra Kumar Kaurav. She characterised the RTI request as “a fishing and roving inquiry.” The Registry, she said, could not divert resources to collate such information.The case is Saurav Das v. CPIO, Supreme Court of India. Das, a journalist and RTI activist, filed an application in April 2023 asking three questions about Justice T. Raja, the former Acting Chief Justice of the Madras high court. Were any complaints of corruption or improper conduct received against him? How many? What action was taken? The Supreme Court’s central public information officer refused to answer. The information was “not maintained in the manner as sought for,” the Central Public Information Officer (CPIO) stated. The first appellate authority upheld the refusal. The Central Information Commission remanded the matter. The CPIO refused again, on identical grounds. Das moved the Delhi high court through Advocate Prashant Bhushan.The April 1 hearing, however, produced a significant development. Justice Kaurav indicated that the case had “wider ramifications” for the institution. He directed both sides to propose a mechanism balancing two objectives. The reputation of honest judges must be protected. The public must have access to information on how complaints are handled. The matter is next listed on May 7.The 8,630-complaint contradictionThe Supreme Court’s claim that it maintains no judge-specific complaint data must be read against a recent disclosure to parliament. In February 2026, the Union law ministry told the Lok Sabha that the Chief Justice of India’s office received 8,630 complaints against sitting judges between 2016 and 2025. This data was furnished by the Supreme Court itself. Complaints rose from 729 in 2016 to 1,102 in 2025 – a 51% increase.Bhushan pressed this contradiction at the hearing. The Supreme Court furnished year-wise aggregate figures to parliament. How then can it claim that it maintains no information in the format the RTI applicant sought? At a minimum, recording 8,630 complaints would require capturing the identity of the judge complained against. Without that basic field, an aggregate figure is meaningless.Bobde responded that the parliamentary data concerned only total complaints against all sitting judges, not judge-specific breakdowns. But as Das noted on X after the hearing, this claim is “quite bizarre.” Basic data such as the judge’s name would logically have to be captured while recording complaints. Otherwise, how did the figure of 8,630 appear?The high court repeatedly questioned how it was possible that no such data was maintained. It also expressed concern about the public perception this creates. Large aggregate figures disclosed without any clarity on how complaints were handled create an impression of inaction. This, the court observed, is detrimental to the judiciary’s image.The format defence and Section 4(1)Das did not seek information in any particular format. He asked a binary question: were complaints received against Justice T. Raja? That admits of only a yes or a no. Bhushan pointed out that Das had offered to file a fresh RTI in whatever format the Supreme Court specified. Justice Kaurav’s response was telling. An applicant could file a hundred applications in different formats. That was beside the point. The Registry could not rely on a technicality to refuse disclosure.The “not maintained in the manner sought for” formulation is a pattern RTI practitioners have repeatedly encountered with the higher judiciary. It does not engage with whether the information exists. It deflects the question into a procedural cul-de-sac.This sits poorly with Section 4(1) of the RTI Act. That provision imposes a positive obligation on every public authority. Records must be “duly catalogued and indexed” to facilitate the right to information. Records appropriate for computerisation must be computerised within a reasonable time. This is not discretionary. If the Supreme Court received 8,630 complaints in a decade and cannot retrieve them by judge, it is in breach of this statutory duty. What SCOI v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal heldBobde invoked the 2019 five-judge Constitution Bench judgment in SCOI v. Subhash Chandra Agarwal to resist disclosure. The reliance deserves scrutiny.Subhash Chandra Agarwal held, first and most importantly, that the RTI Act applies to the CJI’s office. It then addressed the extent of that applicability. Information exchanged between Collegium members in the appointment and transfer process, it held, is protected as a fiduciary relationship. But the judgment distinguished between the Collegium’s deliberative process and information bearing on public interest. Under Section 8(1)(j), personal information unrelated to public activity is exempt. Personal information bearing on public activity is not.Das’s question does not concern the Collegium’s deliberative process. He has not asked for complaint content, the CJI’s assessment, or material feeding into appointment decisions. He has asked whether complaints exist and what happened to them. This falls squarely within the public interest override. Complaints about a sitting judge’s conduct concern the exercise of sovereign judicial power. They cannot be characterised as merely personal.Das, who was present at the hearing, noted on X that the Supreme Court’s counsel read out portions of the judgment to support non-disclosure. Justice Kaurav’s response was pointed. Was the Supreme Court arguing against its own case?Bobde also invoked Section 7(9) of the RTI Act, which permits refusal where compliance would “disproportionately divert” resources. But proportionality cuts both ways. The Supreme Court compiled aggregate year-wise data for parliament. Locating complaints against a named judge within those records is a less intensive task, not a more intensive one.The opacity trapThe deeper problem with the Supreme Court’s position is that it conflates dignity with secrecy. The argument, at its core, is that disclosing complaint information would damage judicial independence. However, it is opacity that is corroding public confidence.The parliamentary data disclosed 8,630 complaints but was silent on what followed. Almost simultaneously, the Supreme Court took suo motu cognisance of a Class 8 NCERT textbook chapter on corruption in the judiciary. It banned the book and blacklisted its three authors from publicly funded work. The juxtaposition was devastating. The judiciary’s own data confirmed that thousands of complaints were being filed. The parliamentary record confirmed that no disposal information was available. And the judiciary’s response was to suppress a school textbook. Das, in his X thread, connected the dots. The Supreme Court had given year-wise data to the government. Yet, it argued before the high court that it maintained no records in the format sought. Was the Registry, Das asked on X earlier, “lying on oath before the Delhi High Court”?The in-house procedure for handling complaints, adopted by full court resolution in 1999, operates without external audit. The CJI receives complaints, decides whether to act, and may constitute a three-member inquiry committee. There is no reporting requirement. A complainant cannot know whether a complaint was even acknowledged. No published record exists of how many inquiries were initiated or what they yielded. The Justice Yashwant Varma episode illustrates the point. The Supreme Court has refused to disclose the in-house inquiry report in that case. Aggregate data without disposition information demonstrates the absence of accountability, not its presence.Bhushan made this argument at the hearing. Without transparency on judicial complaints, he submitted, suspicion festers. Justice Kaurav appeared to agree.The honest-judge problem and its solutionJustice Kaurav raised a concern that any transparency proposal must address. Disgruntled litigants might file frivolous complaints against a judge. They could then use RTI to publicise a misleadingly high complaint count. An honest judge’s reputation would suffer.This is not just a hypothetical. In a system handling hundreds of complaints annually, many will be motivated by adverse orders rather than genuine misconduct. But the answer is more transparency, not less.Consider what disposition data would achieve. If complaints are accompanied by outcome information, a judge against whom 15 complaints were filed and all found baseless is vindicated by that record. Opacity, by contrast, leaves reputations vulnerable to innuendo. A judge who faced only unsubstantiated complaints has nothing to fear from a system that records that they were unsubstantiated. A system that refuses to say anything at all provides no such protection.Das acknowledged this concern in his account of the hearing on X. He and Bhushan suggested that the risk could be mitigated by disclosing action taken, especially where complaints were found frivolous.The mechanism questionJustice Kaurav adjourned the matter to May 7. He directed both sides to propose a mechanism balancing the safeguarding of honest judges with public access to complaint-handling information. The direction rejects the Supreme Court’s framing of complete non-disclosure. It opens space for a structured middle ground.What might such a mechanism involve? At a minimum, the Supreme Court could publish anonymised aggregate data on complaint disposition. This would cover categories received, numbers dismissed at the preliminary stage, numbers resulting in in-house inquiry, and outcomes. No individual judge would be identified. No complaint content would be disclosed. Nothing in Subhash Chandra Agarwal would be breached.A more robust version could require disclosure, on request, of the number and disposition of complaints against a specific judge. The substance of complaints would remain protected. This would fall within the public interest override in Section 8(1)(j). It would also give effect to Section 4(1)’s record-keeping mandate.Bhushan proposed a further alternative: permitting the applicant to inspect primary records under appropriate safeguards. Section 2(j) of the RTI Act recognises inspection as a form of access to information. This would shift the collation burden to the applicant, addressing the Section 7(9) objection.The Saurav Das case arrives at a fraught institutional moment. The NCERT ban, the Varma inquiry, the parliamentary data, the Collegium’s persistent opacity, the in-house procedure’s impermeability: these are facets of a single structural problem. The institution insists on public trust while refusing to furnish the information on which trust depends.The Delhi high court is now adjudicating what appears to be a narrow RTI dispute. But the real question is whether judicial self-regulation entails an absolute right to self-concealment. The Supreme Court can count complaints for parliament but cannot find them for a citizen. This does not draw a principled distinction between judicial independence and judicial opacity. What Justice Kaurav does with this case may determine whether that distinction begins to be drawn.