Behind Curtain and Keyhole: RTI vs. Judges’ Asset Declarations
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From a 1997 internal promise to a 2019 constitutional principle and now a 2025 digital practice, the Supreme Court of India’s asset-disclosure saga charts the uneasy balance between judicial transparency and personal privacy.
By P SESH KUMAR
New Delhi, October 22, 2025 — In 2007, a citizen asked a simple question under India’s Right to Information Act (RTI): have Supreme Court judges disclosed their assets as promised in a 1997 Full Court resolution? That query triggered a marathon legal journey across 12 years—Delhi High Court (single judge, then full bench), a Supreme Court reference to a Constitution Bench, and finally the 13 November 2019 ruling that the Chief Justice of India’s (CJI) office is a “public authority” under RTI.
The Court held that judges’ asset declarations are indeed “information,” not held in fiduciary secrecy, but the contents are protected as “personal information” and therefore disclosable only if a larger public-interest test under Section 8(1)(j) is satisfied. In 2025, the Court went further as a matter of institutional policy: it began publishing the sitting judges’ asset statements on its website—voluntarily and with redactions as required—marking a practical, if belated, convergence of transparency and privacy.
Compared with the United States’ aggressive statutory regime of searchable, time-bound judicial financial disclosures, the UK Supreme Court’s explicit decision not to run a public interests register, Europe’s judicial bodies (notably the ECHR) emphasizing internal declarations and recusals rather than public asset lists, South Africa’s split public/confidential register, and Brazil’s access-to-information culture with internal declarations to oversight bodies, India today sits in the middle-more open in principle than a decade ago, but still selectively public by design.
The long arc: from a 1997 promise to a 2019 principle-and a 2025 practice
The backstory begins with the Supreme Court’s Full Court Resolution of 7 May 1997, which required every judge to declare all assets (including spousal/dependent holdings) “to the Chief Justice,” with an explicit note: “The declaration … shall be confidential.” That is the tension point: an internal accountability promise, not a public-disclosure mandate.
In 2007, RTI activist Subhash Chandra Agarwal asked the Supreme Court’s CPIO if judges were, in fact, filing those declarations. The CPIO refused. The CIC ordered disclosure. In 2009, Justice Ravindra Bhat of the Delhi High Court upheld the CIC; in January 2010, a Delhi High Court Full Bench agreed: the CJI’s office is a public authority; declarations are “information”; not held in fiduciary capacity; and while contents are personal information protected by Section 8(1)(j), the fact of compliance (whether declarations were filed) is “innocuous” and thus disclosable. The Supreme Court then referred the matter to a larger bench given its constitutional stakes.
After nearly a decade in cold storage, the Constitution Bench (13 November 2019) delivered a carefully-balanced verdict: (1) the CJI’s office is subject to RTI; (2) judges’ asset declarations are “information” and not held by the CJI in a fiduciary capacity; (3) the contents of those declarations are personal information, disclosable only if the larger public interest outweighs privacy under Section 8(1)(j); (4) the Court encouraged evolving formats and redaction norms, even citing the U.S. Ethics in Government Act as a template for safe disclosure (e.g., redact home addresses/family data). In short: openness by rule, privacy by exception-tested case-by-case.
For years, implementation lagged. The Supreme Court’s website briefly hosted declarations beginning 2009, but updates were patchy and appeared to stall after 31 March 2018, as investigative reporting noted. Then, in April–May 2025, a Full Court resolution led to fresh publication of asset declarations by a majority of sitting judges, with files posted on the Supreme Court’s official “Assets of Judges” portal (21 of 33 judges initially, including the CJI). This is not RTI compulsion; it is voluntary proactive disclosure, aligned with the Court’s own 2019 guidance on formats and redactions. Net effect: the legal principle (2019) finally birthed a living practice (2025).
What exactly did the Supreme Court decide in 2019?
Read the holding, shorn of chatter: CJI is a public authority under RTI; information held by the CJI in that capacity is within the Act.
Asset declarations are “information.”
No fiduciary shield. The CJI doesn’t hold fellow judges’ declarations in a fiduciary capacity that would automatically block RTI.
Privacy balancing: The contents are personal information and may be disclosed only via Section 8(1)(j) upon a larger public-interest showing. The fact of whether judges filed declarations under the 1997 resolution is disclosable (no privacy bar).
Implementation blueprint: The Court cited U.S. practices (redactions, standardized forms) as models to “consider” while evolving India-specific formats.
That answers the common misconception: the Court did not categorically exempt asset declarations from RTI; it subjected the contents to privacy-public-interest balancing. And by pointing to U.S. redaction norms, it signalled a workable path to transparency without doxxing judges.
Where India stands now, in context
India (2025): Legally, the CJI’s office is under RTI; asset-declaration contents require Section 8(1)(j) balancing; policy-wise, the Supreme Court now proactively publishes judges’ declarations on its site (with obvious privacy redactions). Compliance visibility across High Courts remains uneven. This is a significant shift from a decade ago, yet neither as sweeping as the U.S. regime nor as restrictive as some peers.
United States: Since the Ethics in Government Act (1978)-and turbo-charged by the Courthouse Ethics and Transparency Act (2022)-federal judges (including U.S. Supreme Court Justices) must file annual public financial disclosures and 45-day periodic transaction reports for stock trades over $1,000. The Administrative Office of U.S. Courts hosts a searchable, downloadable database of judicial disclosures (from 2022 onward). In practice, the regime enables timely scrutiny and drives recusals when conflicts surface.
United Kingdom: The UK Supreme Court has explicitly decided not to publish a public Register of Interests for Justices, arguing that a register might be misleading because one cannot realistically tabulate all possible interests that could arise before the Court. UK judicial transparency skews toward publication of judgments, disciplinary statements, and robust recusal practices, not asset lists.
European landscape (Council of Europe / ECHR): The European Court of Human Rights relies on a rule-based framework: judges must declare additional activities to the President, and recusals are strictly policed; the focus is on institutional independence and conflict management, not public asset registers.
South Africa: Statute and regulations create a Register of Judges’ Registrable Interests with a public part and a confidential part, managed by a Registrar under the Judicial Service Commission Act. Annual disclosures are mandatory; the public portion offers a middle path between secrecy and full financial exposure.
Brazil: The Conselho Nacional de Justiça (CNJ) has built a strong LAI (Access to Information Law)-driven transparency architecture (notably CNJ Resolution 215/2015). Judges and judicial staff must submit declarations of assets and income to oversight bodies, though routine public posting of individual judicial asset statements is not the norm; instead, transparency emphasizes institutional data and access mechanisms, with personal-data limits aligning to Brazil’s LGPD privacy law.
Bottom line: On a spectrum from full public disclosure (U.S.) to no public register (UKSC), India in 2025 has moved from opaque internal declarations to proactive publication-calibrated by privacy/redactions and backed by a constitutional-level judgment that embeds RTI into the judiciary’s own administrative files. It is not maximalist, but it is measurably more transparent than the status quo ante.
The time-lag lessons
Why did this take 12 years from RTI application (2007) to Constitution Bench (2019), and then six more to real-world publication (2025)? Three reasons stand out.
One, doctrine vs. design. The Court had to reconcile judicial independence (a basic-structure principle) with informational openness (a facet of free speech). That invites a proportionality test, not a bright line. The 2019 decision supplied the doctrine; formats, redactions, and processes had to be designed afterward.
Two, privacy jurisprudence matured in parallel. With Puttaswamy (2017) constitutionalizing privacy, the judiciary could not simply “dump PDFs.” The 2019 Court explicitly gestured to U.S. redaction practices, making a future policy shift safer and more legitimate.
Three, institutional change is iterative. Even after 2019, web publication was uneven; external nudges (media scrutiny, civil society) and internal signals (Full Court resolutions) ultimately produced the 2025 portal update. That arc-principle to pilot to policy-is how high-stakes transparency tends to land in sensitive institutions.
The way forward: Can we lock-in the gains; standardise the guardrails?
India’s current position is promising but fragile. The Court has already pointed to the blueprint:
- Codify formats and redactions. Use standardized, plain-English forms with mandatory redactions (exact addresses, account numbers, dependent minors’ identifiers), mirroring U.S. practice. Publish metadata (categories and ranges) rather than granular amounts where risks outweigh benefits.
- Publish on a schedule. Annual disclosures and 45-day periodic transaction reports for securities could be adopted by rule (or statute), even if the judiciary prefers to begin with annuals and a delayed upload-a measured step that still deters conflicts.
- Recusal transparency. Pair disclosures with succinct recusal notes, so the public sees the system working without compromising privacy. The ECHR’s rules-first model shows that conflict management can be as trust-enhancing as over-disclosure.
- National judicial portal. The 2025 Supreme Court assets page is a start. Extend a uniform template to High Courts; audit for completeness annually; maintain an archive to track changes over judicial tenure.
- Independent oversight of the process, not the judges. Task a small secretariat (within the Registry) to validate filings for completeness and redactions-not to evaluate wealth or lifestyle—thus protecting independence while ensuring compliance.
India’s 2019 judgment gave us the principle-RTI applies to the CJI’s office; asset declarations are “information”; contents are private unless public interest justifies disclosure-and 2025 finally gave us the practice via proactive publication on the Supreme Court’s site. Now we should lock in uniform forms, codify redactions, time-box uploads, and expand the template to High Courts. Borrow the U.S. cadence (annuals plus periodic trades), temper it with the ECHR’s conflict-management rigor, and avoid the UK’s paralysis over “perfect completeness.” Done right, judicial transparency stops being a spectacle and becomes what it should be: boring, reliable plumbing that strengthens trust without endangering judges.
If India sustains this cadence, it could offer a third way-principled openness with privacy-by-design-that is exportable across common-law judiciaries wary of going “full-U.S.” yet unwilling to do nothing.
(This is an opinion piece, and views expressed are those of the author only)
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