India has a single, unified legal system. The Supreme Court (SC) is at the pinnacle of the Indian judiciary’s pyramidal system. The Supreme Court is above the district and subordinate courts, which are below them. The lesser courts work directly under the supervision of the higher courts.

Reasons

• Because public trials are nearly never heard by the public, judicial corruption abounds.
• Corruption thrives in the absence of accountability.
• Judicial accountability is just as crucial as executive or legislative responsibility.
• At least three distinct goals are promoted by judicial accountability: the rule of law, public faith in the court, and institutional responsibility.
• Regular judicial performance evaluations are a good way to ensure better judicial responsibility, but India currently lacks an institutional structure to do so.
• Judges become corrupt when they have absolute authority and their personal agendas take precedence over the case’s merits.
• Lower-level judicial corruption: India’s judicial corruption is a cancer that spreads from the bottom up.
• According to the Global Corruption Report 2007, India and Pakistan have a greater perception of corruption than Hong Kong, Malaysia, Singapore, and Thailand. In Pakistan, 55% of those polled believe the judiciary is corrupt.
• According to a Transparency International study from 2007, 77 percent of respondents in an Indian poll thought the judiciary is corrupt.
• According to Transparency International (TI 2011), over 45 percent of persons paid a bribe to the judiciary in 2009-2010 in exchange for a speedy resolution of cases involving divorce, bail, and other processes.
• According to the Asian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), taking a petition to court costs at least $1,000 in bribes.
• “There is a substantial danger of corruption at the lowest judicial levels,” according to the GAN Business Anti-Corruption Portal report 2017. Bribes and irregular payments are frequently exchanged for favourable court rulings.” For example, a senior civil judge from the Tis Hazari District Court was detained for allegedly receiving a bribe to decide in favour of a plaintiff in a case.

Impact

• Corruption-related occurrences at the lowest levels of the justice system erode public confidence. The loss of faith in the courts might jeopardise government.
• The absence of justice is sure to encourage extrajudicial executions, the exercise of extraconstitutional authority, pervasive corruption, and unjustified and savage violence against some segments of society (e.g., lynching of innocent cattle traders).
• Judicial corruption results in procedural and, to some extent, substantive justice failures.

Way forward

• Using non-traditional conflict resolution methods.
• Modern technology.
• appointing suitable legal academics to judicial seats
• Computerization of court records is possible.
• Court sessions should be recorded on videotape.
• The implementation of contemporary tracking systems and a reassessment of how court documents are handled can eradicate much of the petty corruption that exists in lower courts.
• Contempt of court and impeachment procedures should be improved.
• Infrastructure improvements in the courts.
• Enforcing judges’ and attorneys’ integrity codes
• Including the courts under the Right to Information Act.

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/indias-judiciary-and-the-slackening-cog-of-trust/article65394817.ece

How to structure

1. Give a brief intro about India’s judiciary
2. Discuss the causes of judicial corruption and Mention how the erosion of trust in judiciary can affect governance
3. Suggest measures
4. Conclude