Five Years of Your Accounts, Milords? Let’s Start With Yours

I. The demand

On 17 September 2026, a bench of Justices Ahsanuddin Amanullah and N.V. Anjaria, sitting in Court No. 8 on a writ petition that began as one student’s complaint against Amity University, Noida, issued an order to the entire private higher-education sector of India. The line every newspaper carried was that “no private university shall be allowed to be run as a profit-making institution.” The lines the newspapers mostly skipped are the ones that matter.

Every State must ensure that every university in its jurisdiction files audited reports for the last five years showing the funds it generated, how it used them, and what it paid to people not directly connected with its functioning as an educational institution. The details, the Court said, must be complete in all regards. Universities must disclose what they took from governments in land, legal relaxations and privileges; the names of every person who runs admissions, sets papers, conducts exams, marks answer sheets and handles money; every fee and every collection under any name; how surplus is invested; how staff are recruited and paid; every class allotted to every teacher since January 2025 and every class actually taken; the composition of grievance committees and the exact number, outcome and time frame of every complaint for three years.

Then the teeth. The affidavits go through the Union, State and UT governments, due in six weeks, personally affirmed by Chief Secretaries. Governments are cautioned not to withhold anything in their own possession. No State may say it could only pass on what a university gave it, because — the Court reminded them — they have powers, including coercive measures, to extract whatever the Court wants. Every respondent not represented that day was fined five lakh rupees, payable in two weeks, and its head must show cause. Counsel who logged in without saying whom they represented had their appearances rejected and their clients fined. Anyone who refuses a document or a witness to the Court’s inquiry officer — party or not — will be treated as in defiance and in contempt.

Five years of books. Complete in all regards. Six weeks. Personal affirmation by the highest civil servant in every State. Coercive measures. Contempt.

Now hold that order up to the institution that wrote it.

II. The mirror

The Supreme Court has been promising to declare its judges’ assets for twenty-nine years. In a Full Court meeting on 7 May 1997 it resolved that every judge should declare all assets held in his own name, his spouse’s or his dependants’, to the Chief Justice — and that the declaration “shall be confidential.” A secret declaration to one’s own boss. In 2009 it resolved to put the declarations on its website, adding that this was purely on a voluntary basis. The volunteering did not last: the Delhi High Court, which had 29 of 35 judges disclosing in 2018, was down to 7 of 38 by 2025.

In between, the Court fought for twelve years against a single RTI applicant, Subhash Chandra Agarwal, who asked in 2007 whether judges had even filed the confidential declarations the 1997 resolution required. The Central Information Commission said yes in January 2009. The Supreme Court’s own registry took the Commission to the Delhi High Court, lost before a single judge in September 2009, lost before a Full Bench in January 2010, and then appealed — to the Supreme Court. It took a Constitution Bench until 13 November 2019 to rule that the Chief Justice’s office is a public authority under the RTI Act. One of the five judges on that bench was Sanjiv Khanna.

It then took a fire. On 1 April 2025 — seventeen days after burnt currency was found at the official residence of a sitting Delhi High Court judge — the Full Court decided that judges’ statements of assets would be placed in the public domain on the Court’s website. The uploads began on 6 May 2025 with 21 of the 33 sitting judges. The twelve not yet uploaded were Justices J.K. Maheshwari, B.V. Nagarathna, Dipankar Datta, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Manoj Misra, Aravind Kumar, Prashant Kumar Mishra, Satish Chandra Sharma, Prasanna B. Varale, N. Kotiswar Singh, R. Mahadevan and Joymalya Bagchi. The deadline for the rest? The Court’s press release of 5 May promised the remaining statements would be uploaded “as and when they are received.”

As and when received. Read that beside “within six weeks from today, personally affirmed by their respective Chief Secretaries.”

Seventeen months later, this is where the mandate stands. As of 22 September 2026 the Court’s “Assets of Judges” page lists 27 names. The Court is at its full sanctioned strength of 34. The seven judges for whom the Court’s own page carries no declaration are five sworn in on 2 June 2026 — Justices Sheel Nagu, Shree Chandrashekhar, Sanjeev Sachdeva, Arun Palli and V. Mohana — and two who have been on the bench for years: Justice B.V. Nagarathna, appointed in August 2021 and in line by seniority to become Chief Justice of India in 2027, and Justice N. Kotiswar Singh, appointed in July 2024. Both were on the May 2025 list of twelve. Both are still not on the page. Nobody has been fined five lakh rupees. Nobody has been asked to show cause. And the page itself says, in the future tense, that “Placing the declaration of assets on the Supreme Court website will be mandatory.” Will be. Seventeen months on.

Below the Supreme Court, the picture stops being embarrassing and becomes a scandal. Out of 769 judges serving in 25 High Courts, only 95 — 12.35 per cent — had disclosed their assets publicly, according to an analysis published in April 2025. Kerala (93.18 per cent) and Himachal Pradesh (91.66 per cent) led; Madras managed 5 of 65 and Chhattisgarh 1 of 16. There were 19 High Courts whose judges had not made their asset details public at all, including some of the largest — Allahabad, with 81 judges, Bombay, Calcutta, Gujarat and Patna. None of Gujarat’s 25 judges had disclosed anything. Several High Courts — Allahabad, Rajasthan, Bombay, Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Uttarakhand among them — had actively opposed public disclosure and refused RTI requests about judges’ assets. No comparable audit has been published since; there is no reason to believe the number has moved much, because nobody has been ordered to move it.

Every other constitutional functionary lives under rules the judiciary would not accept for itself. Rule 16(1) of the All India Services (Conduct) Rules, 1968 requires civil servants to declare their assets annually, and election candidates have had to disclose since the Supreme Court itself ordered it in 2002. The people whose Chief Secretaries must now swear to universities’ accounts file their own returns every year. In August 2023 a Parliamentary Standing Committee recommended legislation making it mandatory for Supreme Court and High Court judges to declare their assets annually. Nothing came of it. The one Bill that reached Parliament — the Judges (Declaration of Assets and Liabilities) Bill, 2009 — was pulled on 3 August 2009 because Clause 6 provided that judges would declare their assets but the declarations would not be made public. Even the law drafted to make judges disclose was drafted to keep them hidden.

Universities: five years of audited accounts, complete in all regards, or coercive measures. Judges: a single voluntary snapshot, filed as and when.

III. The cash that burned and the FIR that never came

Here is what the judiciary’s accountability machinery produces when it is finally, unavoidably, turned on one of its own.

On the night of 14–15 March 2025, a fire broke out at 30 Tughlaq Crescent, New Delhi, the official residence of Justice Yashwant Varma of the Delhi High Court. Delhi Fire Services and Delhi Police personnel reported finding burnt, half-burnt and wet currency notes in a storeroom on the premises. On 22 March the Supreme Court did something it had never done: it uploaded the Delhi High Court Chief Justice’s inquiry report, with photographs and video, on its website. The same day the Chief Justice set up a three-member in-house committee of Chief Justice Sheel Nagu, Chief Justice G.S. Sandhawalia and Justice Anu Sivaraman.

Within a fortnight the first citizen asked for the obvious. A bench of Justices A.S. Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan refused to entertain advocate Mathews Nedumpara’s plea for an FIR, calling it premature: once the in-house inquiry was complete, all recourse would be open, and if required the Chief Justice could direct the registration of an FIR. Remember that promise.

The in-house committee concluded that Justice Varma had “tacit or active control” of the storeroom. On 8 May 2025 Chief Justice Khanna wrote to the President and the Prime Minister forwarding the report. He recommended removal. He did not direct an FIR. Nor did his successor. Nor has the present Chief Justice.

The judge sued his own institution. Chief Justice Gavai recused himself, saying “I was part of the conversation.” On 7 August 2025 Justices Dipankar Datta and A.G. Masih dismissed the petition, holding that the in-house committee’s constitution and procedure were not illegal — and adding that the Chief Justice and the committee had scrupulously followed the process “except uploading photos and video,” which the Court said was not required. Note the sequence. The one act of genuine transparency in the entire episode — showing the public the burning money — was the one thing the Court later went out of its way to say it need not have done.

Parliament then did what the courts would not. Speaker Om Birla received a removal notice signed by 146 Lok Sabha members, including Ravi Shankar Prasad and Leader of the Opposition Rahul Gandhi, on 21 July 2025, and on 12 August 2025 constituted a three-member inquiry committee. When Justice Varma challenged the Speaker’s panel, the Supreme Court threw that out too, on 16 January 2026.

Then, with the inquiry nearly done, the judge left the building. Varma resigned on 9 April 2026, submitting his resignation to President Droupadi Murmu. The Lok Sabha’s rare removal proceedings were rendered “infructuous.” He had been due to retire on 5 January 2031.

The committee finished anyway. Headed by Supreme Court Justice Aravind Kumar, it submitted its report to the Speaker in May 2026, and on 12 August 2026 the report was laid before the Lok Sabha along with the evidence. It found all three Articles of Charge proved: substantial unexplained currency was present within his official residential premises, material evidence was not preserved, and his explanations were evasive and unsatisfactory. Its consolidated conclusion was blunt: “Articles of Charges I, II & III are proved.” The committee’s own language, as reported, was that the whole defence was false and added to grave suspicion. It also made clear that its finding was not a criminal finding that Varma personally owned the currency — which is exactly why a criminal investigation is the only thing that could settle the question. Varma has denied wrongdoing throughout, saying the episode appeared to be a conspiracy to frame him.

So: two committees, one appointed by the Chief Justice of India and one by the Speaker of the Lok Sabha, both adverse. A resignation that ends the removal process. And eighteen months after firemen photographed sacks of five-hundred-rupee notes on a judge’s premises, no FIR.

What happened when citizens tried again? On 7 August 2026 a bench of Justices P.S. Narasimha and Alok Aradhe dismissed advocate Ghanshyam Upadhyay’s petition for an FIR and a court-monitored SIT probe, saying it was filed for “cheap publicity.” Justice Narasimha told him: “You are an advocate. This is just a misuse of the judicial process.” Upadhyay’s argument was that a High Court judge is a public servant, that he had now retired, and that there is no immunity from prosecution — the same point the Oka bench had itself made in March 2025 when it told Nedumpara to wait.

On 21 September 2026 the Delhi High Court’s Justice Amit Bansal refused to entertain the same plea for an FIR and a CBI or SIT probe, terming it a “wild witch hunt” and telling the petitioner he had alternative remedies. The judge questioned his locus, pointed him to the Delhi Police and thereafter a magistrate, asked whether he had nothing better to do — and made clear the court was not examining the allegations on merits.

Nobody, in either court, said the money was explained. Nobody said the two committees were wrong. The pleas were dismissed on who was asking and where — with a sneer attached. Compare the Court’s tone four days earlier, when the respondent was a university and the subject was money: no one may plead they are not a party; refusal is defiance; defiance is contempt. When the subject is money in a judge’s house, the citizen asking is the problem.

One more detail, offered with the fairness it requires. The in-house committee that examined Justice Varma was headed by Chief Justice Sheel Nagu of the Punjab and Haryana High Court. The parliamentary committee’s second member, from 6 March 2026, was Justice Shree Chandrashekhar, then Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court. Both were elevated to the Supreme Court on 2 June 2026. As of this week, neither appears on the Court’s assets page. They have been there under four months, and the Court’s own rule gives no deadline — which is precisely the point. The two men who sat in judgment on a colleague’s unexplained cash are, by the Court’s design, under no clock to show the public their own.

IV. The architecture of impunity

None of this is accident. It is design, and the judiciary drew the blueprints.

Since K. Veeraswami v. Union of India (1991), no FIR can be registered against a sitting High Court or Supreme Court judge without the prior consultation of the Chief Justice of India. The Court gave itself a veto over its own prosecution and has held it for thirty-five years. The “in-house procedure” that examined Varma has no statutory basis at all; it is a set of guidelines the judges wrote for themselves in 1999, whose reports are confidential and whose only sanctions are a quiet word, a transfer, or a letter to the Prime Minister.

The constitutional remedy has never once worked. In seventy-six years no judge has been removed by Parliament. Justice V. Ramaswami survived the only Lok Sabha vote ever held, in 1993, because the ruling party abstained. Justice Soumitra Sen resigned in September 2011 after the Rajya Sabha voted to remove him and before the Lok Sabha could. Justice P.D. Dinakaran resigned in July 2011 before his inquiry concluded. Justice Yashwant Varma resigned in April 2026 with the inquiry nearly done. The exit door has always been open, and every judge who reached it walked through unprosecuted.

When the State did once try the criminal route, it took a generation. In August 2008 a bag containing fifteen lakh rupees was delivered to the Chandigarh residence of Justice Nirmaljit Kaur; the prosecution alleged it had been meant for Justice Nirmal Yadav and reached the wrong judge because of the similar names. An FIR was registered on 16 August 2008. Permission to prosecute came from the High Court only in November 2010 and from the President the following year. The special CBI court acquitted Justice Yadav and all co-accused on 29 March 2025, after a seventeen-year trial — with defence counsel attributing the delay to the CBI repeatedly seeking permissions from the High Court. Whatever one thinks of the verdict, this is the system’s only precedent for prosecuting a judge over cash: two years to get permission, seventeen to get a judgment, one accused dead before it came.

Every attempt to build something better has been killed, and usually by the Court. The Judicial Standards and Accountability Bill, 2010, which would have created a statutory complaints mechanism and mandatory asset disclosure, passed the Lok Sabha in 2012 and was allowed to lapse in 2014. The Ninety-Ninth Constitutional Amendment and the National Judicial Appointments Commission — passed near-unanimously by both Houses and ratified by the States — were struck down by the Supreme Court on 16 October 2015 by four judges to one, on the ground that any outsider in the room threatened independence. The Court that, this month, demanded universities name every person who handles their admissions chose, in 2015, to keep its own admissions in a closed room with no minutes.

And when a judge leaves, the “cushion” is waiting. Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi retired in November 2019 and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in March 2020. Justice S. Abdul Nazeer retired in January 2023 and was Governor of Andhra Pradesh within six weeks. In April 2019, when a former staffer accused Chief Justice Gogoi of sexual harassment, he presided over the special bench that heard the matter, with the order signed by the two other judges. The university order forbids diverting a rupee to a governing board member’s salary or comforts. There is no such rule for the bench.

V. Try the order on the bench

Take the 17 September order paragraph by paragraph and read each demand as if addressed to Tilak Marg.

Paragraph 2: admissions are what concern the Court most; disclose the exact procedure and the persons in charge. The collegium’s criteria for elevating a judge have never been published as criteria. The Court did, in May 2025, upload the appointment data for 2022–25 — after the fire, alongside the assets — which tells you what it is capable of when frightened.

Paragraph 2: audited reports for five years, including payments to persons not directly involved in the institution. Judges: one voluntary snapshot on assuming office, updated only on a “substantial acquisition,” with no audit, no verification, no annual return, and no consequence for silence.

Paragraph 7: the grievance mechanism, its composition, the exact number of complaints received in three years, the result, and the time frames. The judiciary publishes no figures on complaints against judges, their disposal or their time frames. The in-house procedure’s reports are confidential by design. The Varma report reached the public only because Parliament tabled it.

Paragraphs 9 and 14: the regulators must disclose the deficiencies pointed out in their last inspection and whether they were removed. Who inspects a judge? No one. Who reports the deficiency? A colleague, confidentially. Was it removed? The public will never know.

Paragraph 12: no State will be allowed the defence that it could only furnish what it was given; it has coercive powers and must use them. The Supreme Court’s defence for its own incomplete page, for seventeen months, has been exactly that: the statements go up as and when received. The Court holds the States to a standard of active extraction that it declines to apply to a web form on its own website.

Paragraph 11: absent without explanation? Five lakh rupees, two weeks, show cause. Seven judges absent from the assets page. Zero rupees. Zero show-cause.

VI. The shield

There is one further asymmetry, and it is the one that makes writing sentences like these a legal act of courage in India. Criticising a university’s finances is journalism. Criticising a judge’s is potential contempt. In August 2020 the Supreme Court convicted Prashant Bhushan of criminal contempt for two tweets about the Chief Justice and the Court, and fined him one rupee — with the alternative of three months in jail and a three-year bar from practice. The offence of “scandalising the court” was abolished in England in 2013 as an anachronism; India retains it and uses it. An institution that can jail its critics for describing its conduct has an unusual incentive to keep that conduct undescribed.

VII. What accountability would actually look like

The judiciary knows what accountability looks like. It wrote it down on 17 September, in twenty pages, for other people. So the demand is simple: the same terms.

Mandatory, annual, public asset declarations for every judge of the Supreme Court and High Courts, with a statutory deadline and a statutory consequence — the standard already imposed on every IAS officer and every candidate for a panchayat seat. A published register of complaints against judges: number received, disposed, time taken — the Court’s own paragraph 7. A statutory complaints body with lay members, so that the only people who judge judges are not judges. An end to the Veeraswami veto, so that an FIR over a room full of burnt currency does not depend on a Chief Justice’s discretion that three Chief Justices have now declined to exercise. And the abolition of scandalising-the-court contempt, so that an article like this one can be answered with facts rather than a notice.

Until then, the Court’s order to the universities should be read as what it is: a precise description of everything the judiciary refuses to do itself, signed and dated, with a return date of 19 November. The universities will file their affidavits. The Chief Secretaries will swear. The regulators will list their deficiencies. And on the Supreme Court’s own website, the sentence will still read that public disclosure “will be” mandatory — future tense, no date, nobody fined, nobody asked why.

Physicians, heal yourselves. Or at the very least, file.