The judiciary as watchdog

Detail

1. What the judiciary is

• Judiciary: the system of courts in a country. It interprets laws and settles disputes. When a law is broken, it decides the punishment. It protects people's rights. It also checks whether laws and government actions follow the Constitution.
• It is called the "watchdog" because it guards against wrongdoing by everyone, including the government.
• It makes everyone follow the law. It settles disputes. It checks whether laws are fair and just.
• It is independent. It does not take orders from the government or from politicians.

2. Four functions (NCERT Class 7)

Function	What it means in simple words
Protect and defend laws	It makes sure laws are obeyed. It decides whether a law was broken and what the punishment should be.
Interpret laws	It explains what a law means when the words are unclear or when two sides read the law differently.
Protect rights and liberty	A person can go to court when their fundamental rights (basic rights guaranteed by Part III of the Constitution) are violated.
Safeguard the Constitution	It does this through judicial review.

• Judicial review: the power of courts to examine a law or a government action and strike it down (declare it invalid) if it breaks the Constitution.

• This power lets the court act as a "referee" between the government and citizens, and between different parts of the government.

• NCERT Class 6 adds two more roles:

• examining executive decisions (decisions of the government that runs the country day to day);
• checking whether legislation (laws made by Parliament or a state legislature) is fair.

3. Structure: one integrated system

• India has a single, integrated judiciary. One chain of courts handles both Union laws and state laws. The USA is different: it has separate federal and state court systems.

Level	Constitutional anchor	Reach
Supreme Court	Art. 124 (set up and composition)	Whole country; the highest court
High Courts	Art. 214 (a High Court for each state)	A state, or a group of states and UTs
Subordinate courts (district and lower courts)	Arts. 233–237	District level and below; supervised by the High Court

• There are 25 High Courts (2025 figure).
• NCERT Class 6 (Fig. 10.5) shows the Supreme Court at the national level and the High Courts at the state level. The Supreme Court's motto is "Yato Dharmastato Jayah" ("where there is dharma, there is victory").

4. Why the watchdog matters

• Rule of law: "everyone must follow the law, even the government". No person or office is above the law.
• Peaceful settlement of disputes: conflicts between citizens, between citizens and the state, and between the Union and the states go to court instead of being settled by force.
• NCERT's conclusion is that without an independent judiciary, "democracy cannot survive".

5. How independence is protected

A watchdog that fears its master cannot bark. The Constitution therefore protects judges in six ways.

(a) Security of tenure: removal only by a special-majority address (Art. 124(4))

• Grounds: only "proved misbehaviour or incapacity" [2].
• Law on procedure: the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968, made under Art. 124(5) [2].

• Steps, in order: 1. Notice of motion. At least 100 Lok Sabha MPs sign it and give it to the Speaker, or at least 50 Rajya Sabha MPs sign it and give it to the Chairman [2]. 2. Admission. The Speaker or Chairman may consult people and examine material. They then admit or refuse the motion [2]. 3. Inquiry Committee. It has three members: a Supreme Court judge, a High Court Chief Justice and a distinguished jurist (a highly respected legal expert) [2]. 4. Charges and defence. The committee frames charges. The judge gets a copy and may give a written defence [2]. 5. Vote in both Houses. Each House must pass the motion by a majority of its total membership AND by at least two-thirds of members present and voting [2]. 6. Removal by the President. The President then issues the removal order [2].

• Address: a formal request from Parliament to the President. "Special majority" means the two-part majority in step 5.

(b) Financial security

• Judges' salaries are charged on the Consolidated Fund of India (Arts. 112(3), 125). Parliament can discuss this spending but does not vote on it. So the government cannot squeeze judges by cutting their pay.

(c) No practice after retirement (Art. 124(7))

• A retired Supreme Court judge cannot plead or act in any court in India. This removes the temptation to please future clients or the government while still in office.

(d) Contempt powers (Arts. 129, 215)

• The Supreme Court (Art. 129) and the High Courts (Art. 215) are courts of record. A court of record is a court whose judgments are kept as permanent evidence and followed by other courts.
• They can punish contempt of court, which means disobeying court orders or acts that lower the court's authority.

(e) Separation from the executive (Art. 50)

• Art. 50 is a Directive Principle (a guideline the state must follow when making policy). It asks the state to separate the judiciary from the executive in public services.

(f) Appointments through the collegium

• Collegium: a group of senior judges that recommends who should become a judge.
• For the Supreme Court, it is the Chief Justice of India (CJI) and the four senior-most SC judges [9].

• For a High Court, it is that court's Chief Justice and its senior judges [9].

• How it grew:

Case	Year	Principle
S.P. Gupta (First Judges case)	1981	"Consultation" with the CJI did not mean the CJI's consent, so the executive had the upper hand. The case also widened access to courts (see §6).
Second Judges case (SC Advocates-on-Record Assn.)	1993	The CJI gets primacy. The collegium system is born.
Third Judges case (Presidential Reference)	1998	Collegium expanded to the CJI plus four senior-most judges [9]
SCAORA (NJAC case)	Oct 2015	The 99th Amendment, 2014 and the NJAC Act, 2014 were struck down by a 4:1 vote [9]

• NJAC (National Judicial Appointments Commission): the body that the 99th Amendment tried to set up to replace the collegium [9]. Its six members were to be:
• the CJI (as chairperson);
• the two senior-most SC judges;
• the Union Law Minister;

• two eminent persons chosen by the PM, the CJI and the Leader of Opposition [9].

• Why it was struck down: executive involvement in appointing judges hurts judicial independence. Judicial independence is part of the basic structure, the core features of the Constitution that even an amendment cannot destroy [9].

• Memorandum of Procedure (MoP): the written procedure for appointments. It was prepared in 1998 after the Second Judges case and the 1998 advisory opinion [10].

6. Opening the courtroom door: writs and PIL

• Writ: a formal written order from a higher court telling a person or authority to do, or stop doing, something.
• Art. 32: a person can go directly to the Supreme Court when a fundamental right is violated. This right to approach the SC is itself a fundamental right.
• Art. 226: High Courts can issue writs for fundamental rights and "for any other purpose". In this sense the HC writ power is wider than the SC's.
• The five writs:
• habeas corpus: produce the detained person before the court;
• mandamus: an order to a public official to do their duty;
• prohibition: stops a lower court from going beyond its powers;
• certiorari: cancels a lower court's order that was made without proper power;

• quo warranto: asks "by what authority" someone holds a public office.

• Public interest litigation (PIL): a case filed by any public-spirited person or group on behalf of people who cannot reach the court themselves, such as the poor, prisoners or bonded labourers.

• Hussainara Khatoon (1979): Bihar undertrial prisoners had been held for years without trial. The Court treated a speedy trial as part of the right to life (Art. 21).
• S.P. Gupta (1981): relaxed locus standi, the old rule that only the person directly harmed may file a case.

7. The watchdog in action (examples in this note)

• Muthamma (Section 7): the Supreme Court struck down service rules that discriminated against women officers in the Indian Foreign Service. This is the court protecting equality.
• Niyamgiri (Section 5): the Court let the gram sabhas (village assemblies) of the forest-dwelling communities decide on bauxite mining in their sacred hills. This is the court protecting community and forest rights against the executive.

8. Limits of the watchdog

(a) Pendency (backlog of cases)

• Over five crore cases are pending across all courts. The figure comes from the National Judicial Data Grid (NJDG), a national online record of cases filed, pending and decided in courts. Check the live NJDG dashboard for the current number.
• The Supreme Court joined the NJDG in 2023. With that, the e-Courts project (the programme to computerise courts) covered every level of court [8].
• Where the backlog sits (15 Sept 2021: over 4.5 crore cases in all) [6]:
• 87.6% in subordinate courts and 12.3% in High Courts [6];
• 21% of High Court cases were over 10 years old [6];

• 23% of subordinate-court cases were over 5 years old [6].

• Vacancies add to the delay. On 21 March 2023, High Courts had 785 working judges against a sanctioned strength of 1,114, leaving 329 posts vacant [7].

• Effect: "justice delayed is justice denied". Undertrials stay in jail, and poor people cannot afford long cases.

(b) Activism vs overreach

• Judicial activism: courts take an active role to protect rights when the other organs fail, for example through PIL.
• Judicial overreach: courts enter areas that belong to the legislature or executive, such as making policy or running administration. This strains the separation of powers (the division of work between the three organs).

(c) Judicial accountability: who watches the watchdog?

• In-house procedure: the judiciary's own internal method of inquiring into complaints against judges. It is used before or instead of Parliament's removal process.
• The Justice Yashwant Varma case (Delhi High Court):
• March 2025. The CJI set up a three-member in-house committee [3]:
  • Justice Sheel Nagu (Chief Justice, Punjab & Haryana HC);
  • Justice G.S. Sandhawalia (Chief Justice, Himachal Pradesh HC);
  • Justice Anu Sivaraman (Karnataka HC).
• The Delhi HC Chief Justice was asked not to assign him judicial work [3].
• 3 May 2025. The committee gave its report to the CJI [4].
• 12 Aug 2025. The Lok Sabha Speaker set up a Judges Inquiry Committee under the Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968 [5].

• May 2026. That committee submitted its report to the Speaker. The report is to be laid before both Houses of Parliament [5].

• Past attempts: removal proceedings were started in 2018 against the then CJI [2]. No judge of the Supreme Court or a High Court has yet been removed by this process.

Prelims Hooks

• Art. 124(4): an SC judge is removed only on "proved misbehaviour or incapacity". Each House must pass the motion by a majority of total membership AND by two-thirds of members present and voting [2].
• Judges (Inquiry) Act, 1968: the motion needs 100 Lok Sabha or 50 Rajya Sabha signatures. The inquiry committee = an SC judge + an HC Chief Justice + a distinguished jurist [2].
• Trap: a judge is removed by the President, not by Parliament. Parliament only passes the address [2].
• Art. 124(7): a retired SC judge cannot practise in any court in India.
• Arts. 129 / 215: courts of record with contempt power (SC / HC). Art. 50 = a Directive Principle, not a fundamental right.
• Art. 32 vs Art. 226: the HC writ power is wider ("any other purpose"). Only Art. 32 is itself a fundamental right.
• Case–principle pairs: S.P. Gupta (1981) relaxed locus standi; Hussainara Khatoon (1979) made speedy trial part of Art. 21; SCAORA (2015) struck down the 99th Amendment and the NJAC by a 4:1 vote [9].
• NJAC (99th Amendment, 2014): 6 members, including the Union Law Minister and 2 eminent persons [9].
• NJDG: the Supreme Court joined it in 2023 [8]. In 2021, 87.6% of pending cases were in subordinate courts [6].

Mains Points

• Independence vs accountability. The NJAC was struck down to protect independence [9]. But the collegium is criticised for lack of transparency and of outside oversight [9], and removal under Art. 124(4) is so hard that no judge has been removed. A balance is possible:
• a revised Memorandum of Procedure with clear rules for choosing judges [10];
• a statute-based in-house process;

• published reasons for appointments.

• Access vs capacity. PIL and Arts. 32/226 opened the door to the poor. But more than five crore pending cases and about 30% HC vacancies (2023) [7] weaken the watchdog. Remedies:

• filling vacancies quickly;
• Arrears Committees and fast-track courts;

• e-Courts and the NJDG as tools to track and cut delay [8].

• Activism vs overreach. Muthamma and Niyamgiri show activism protecting equality and community rights. Overreach into policy can weaken the separation of powers and the legislature's accountability to voters. Self-restraint and clear limits on PIL keep the referee neutral.

• Watching the watchdog. The Varma case (2025–26) tested both tracks one after the other: the in-house procedure [3][4] and then a statutory inquiry [5]. It shows the need for a faster and more open way to handle complaints against judges.