Morning gyan: Permission to travel is always given by the @PMOIndia. Judges of the #SupremeCourt and high courts concerned forward a request to Dept of Justice, Ministry of Law. A travel itinerary is prepared, the financial implications (TA/DA), official protocol etc worked out. The Foreign Travel Order is then forwarded to the PM who okays it.
Some 18 years ago, the Manmohan Singh govt had cracked the whip and read out the Code of Conduct to judges of the Supreme Court and high courts to curb the practice of judges going abroad for conferences and seminars even when the court was in session and a handful of judges were always away.
But even then, I don’t remember a judge going abroad to attend a private sports tournament!
In order to curb this practice, the MMS government’s law minister, Hansraj Bharadwaj, forwarded a story done by me for @CNNnews18 to the CJI and expressed his unhappiness at the “bad press”. The law ministry also came up with a fresh list of protocols following the story. The CJI then unhappily used my story to write to the high courts concerned sharing the government’s concerns. Some fresh rules were laid out.
It was decided that there would be proportional representation of judges accepting the invite and only one judge would represent the court. The invite would only be accepted if it was by the judiciary/government of the host country. The number of days was curtailed to what was considered necessary. Judges would travel by the shortest route possible.
The kill joy story that led to these seminal changes was me accessing through RTI the FTO of judges of the SCs and high courts from the dept of Justice since the #SupremeCourtifIndia was not under the RTI.
Then CJI KG Balakrishnan opposed my RTI tooth and nail, accused Hansraj Bharadwaj and then Home minister of conspiring with the media against the judiciary (untrue completely) and finally after nine months of my relentless pursuit, released the FTOs.
The travel details were an eye opener. The biggest “traveller” was ex CJI YK Sabharwal. He was out of the country for 45 days (the entire summer vacation) on tax payer expense, travelled to the US, went to Disneyland, visited his brother, went to Montreal via Vancouver (!!!) before going to Paris and back. The conferences in end May and mid July were at Montreal and Paris. (Why YKS went to Vancouver is another story. IYKYK).
KGB went for a conference to Pretoria, South Africa. His route was Kochi (three day layover at his house), then South Africa where he visited the famous Kruger National Park but skipped going to the Victoria Falls (the PMO was frowning) and some other touristy spots.
A few years later, I chased the story again. The RTI s came in a jiffy. Foreign travels had reduced to 10 per cent of what it used to be. Bharadwaj called me a killjoy but was secretly happy.
I can go on! There are hundreds of FTOs lying around which I got under RTI that gives you an idea how the tax payers money is spent.
But never have I heard of so many judges going for a private event, sponsored by the very companies they are sitting in judgement over.
@sardesairajdeep@kthaparoffice@maneeshchhibber@sharmanagendar
honestly it's troubling to think that the world's biggest political party is so scared of losing that theyre putting all their effort in destroying other parties, instead of just doing better things for the citizens