Kathmandu, June 9:

The civil society and the media are biased against the judiciary, Chief Justice Dilip Kumar Poudel charged today.

Poudel arrived here today after attending a seminar of Chief Justices of the Asia-Pacific region in Malaysia and the 12th International Conference of the Chief Justices of the Asia-Pacific region in Hong Kong.

Talking to media persons at the Tribhuvan International Airport, Poudel termed the global corruption report 2007 of the Transparency International (TI) “biased and prejudiced.”

In its annual report published two weeks ago, the TI had labelled Nepal’s judiciary as one of the most “corrupted” institutions in the country. “This is prejudiced and is not based on facts,” Poudel said.

Poudel said he will develop a mechanism to curb corruption in the judiciary. “Some of the corruption scandals in the judiciary are under investigation,” he said.

Poudel also warned that democracy and the peace process will suffer if media and the the civil society go on making biased statements against the judiciary. “The judiciary plays a significant role in the consolidation of democracy,” he added.