KATHMANDU, JULY 2

Lawyers say structural reforms are needed to address the problem of corruption in the judiciary.

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Recently, an audio tape was leaked in which Rudra Pokharel, a lawyer, is heard offering a bribe of Rs 20 million to Kathmandu District Court Judge Raj Kumar Koirala for securing the release of founder of Civil Savings and Credit Cooperatives Society Ltd Ichha Raj Tamang.

Senior advocates Satish Krishna Kharel and Surendra Kumar Mahto said the root cause of corruption in the judiciary was the faulty process of judges' appointment.

Kharel said the alleged conversation between Advocate Pokhrel and Judge Koirala was the tip of the iceberg and the real problems of corruption in the judiciary could be worse.

'In order to rectify the appointment process of judges, the structure of the Constitutional Council has to be improved and all terms and conditions that the SC justice faces after retirement, must also apply to members of the judicial council,' he said.

SC justices cannot practise law after retirement. They can only become eligible for appointment in the National Human Rights Commission. In recent years, two Judicial Council members Upendra Keshari Neupane and Padam Vaidik earned the wrath of jurists for trying to win nomination as Supreme Court justices.

'It is wrong for anybody to sit on the Judicial Council – the body that nominates judges and seek to become a judge,' Kharel said.

Any lawyer who works as an office bearer of any level of bar association should not be allowed to be nominated as a judge at least for five years from the day the person's tenure in the bar association ends.

Kharel said barring bar association office bearers from securing nomination for judgeship will prevent lawyers from using their position to build relations with powerful people and securing nomination for judgeship.

He also said if all judges made public their assets, that could help control corruption in the judiciary.

Mahto said the judicial system was okay, but those who were in position had corrupted the body. 'Favoritism, nepotism and share-the-spoils politics are at play in the judges' appointment process. As long as these anomalies remain, corruption cannot be controlled,' Mahto added.

He said people responsible for recommending names of judges often do not recommend the names of eligible and honest persons. Lawyers have also demanded that the chief justice should be removed from the Constitutional Council. This issue was raised after it was reported in media that Chief Justice Cholendra Shamsher JB Rana sought his share of spoils while recommending names of people for different constitutional bodies.

A version of this article appears in the print on July 3, 2022, of The Himalayan Times.