8,630 complaints against Indian judges in 10 years, outcomes undisclosed

A recent Parliament question has, unusually, put a hard number on something the higher judiciary typically keeps behind a veil of confidentiality: how many complaints the office of the Chief Justice of India (CJI) has received against sitting judges.

Replying to Lok Sabha Starred Question No 205 (answered on February 13), the Law Ministry tabled year-wise figures, and located the entire subject in the Supreme Court’s in-house accountability architecture — anchored in the 1997 “Restatement of Values of Judicial Life” and the in-house procedure.

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This answer illuminates the uneasy design of judicial accountability in India: The Constitution reserves “removal” of judges to Parliament, while the judiciary has built internal mechanisms to deal with misconduct that may never reach impeachment thresholds — or never be fit for public airing at the complaint stage.

Four key questions

The starred question asked four things: whether the apex court maintains a database of complaints; the number of complaints in the past 10 years and action taken; whether the government will issue guidelines to ensure systematic recording/monitoring; and whether there is any mechanism other than the Centralised Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System (CPGRAMS) to collect and forward complaints.

The government’s core moves were:

1. Locating the handling of complaints firmly “within the judiciary” via an “in-house mechanism”, explicitly invoking judicial independence.

2. Citing two Supreme Court resolutions adopted on May 7, 1997:

(i) The Restatement of Values of Judicial Life; and

(ii) The in-house procedure for “suitable remedial measures” against judges who violate these values.

3. Providing the year-wise count of complaints received in the CJI’s office against sitting judges (2016–2025), totalling 8,630 across the decade, with the highest annual number listed as 1,170 in 2024 (followed by 1,102 in 2025).

4. Stating that CPGRAMS complaints “or in any other form” are forwarded to the CJI/chief justices of high courts, who are described as the competent authorities to “receive” complaints.

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Two things are striking by omission. First, the answer supplies counts, not outcomes — no break-up by subject (corruption/sexual misconduct/other), no disposal categories (dismissed at threshold, referred for inquiry, closed, resignation/transfer advised), and no indication of how many complaints were anonymous, duplicative, or plainly frivolous.

Second, while the question asked about a systematic record/database, the answer effectively says the mechanism exists, the CJI is competent to receive complaints, and they get forwarded — without committing to a public-facing accountability dashboard.

Ethics code sans enforcement statute

The Restatement of Values of Judicial Life (May 7, 1997) is often treated as the judiciary’s ethical “North Star”: conduct in official and personal life that preserves public faith, avoidance of conflicts, financial probity, and restraint in public engagement — principles intended to be self-enforcing through institutional culture.

In the parliamentary reply, the Restatement is made to do a second job: it is the normative foundation for “remedial measures” through the in-house procedure. The implication is deliberate — complaints are not automatically “cases”; they are inputs into an internal ethics-discipline framework where confidentiality is treated as a design feature.

The Constitution draws a bright line: judges of the Supreme Court and high courts can be removed only through the Articles 124(4) and 218 process (addressed by Parliament on “proved misbehaviour or incapacity”), while Article 121 limits parliamentary discussion of judges’ conduct except in a removal motion.

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That structure leaves a large accountability gap for misconduct allegations that are serious but may not (yet) justify impeachment, or are untested.

In-house mechanism

The in-house mechanism was developed to fill that gap. The government's reply summarises it in jurisdictional terms: the CJI is competent to receive complaints against Supreme Court judges and chief justices of high courts, and high court chief justices are competent to receive complaints against high court judges.

How does this play out in practice?

The broad workflow is: preliminary scrutiny; if credible substance exists, constitution of an internal committee; report; and then “remedial” steps — often understood as advisories, withdrawal of work, request for resignation, or escalation where warranted.

A recent public illustration is the Supreme Court’s own March 22, 2025, press release during the Justice Yashwant Varma controversy, which placed in the public domain that an internal process had been set in motion and that work allocation could be withheld.

The 2015 judgment in NJAC case

After striking down the National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC), the Supreme Court’s Constitution Bench issued a supplementary order on December 16, 2015, to “improve” collegium functioning, asking the government to finalise the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP) by supplementing it in consultation with the CJI.

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One of the recurring reform themes in that post-NJAC exercise was the creation of institutional plumbing around appointments: a secretariat, more transparent criteria, and a mechanism to deal with complaints. This is also how the MoP became a proxy battleground: the executive and judiciary negotiated not only appointment procedure but also how “inputs” (including complaints) would be processed, by whom, and with what transparency.

Public reporting has consistently noted that the MoP has remained “work-in-progress” for years after the first draft went to the collegium in 2016, with unresolved points including the complaints/secretariat architecture.

Two distinctions matter for readers:

● MoP complaint-handling (appointments context): typically concerns complaints/inputs about proposed candidates — background checks, adverse intelligence, integrity concerns, and how such material is placed before the collegium.

● In-house complaint-handling (discipline context): concerns complaints against sitting judges — a different constitutional sensitivity, because it implicates independence, reputation, and the impeachment boundary.

Parliament’s Q&A is about the second category, but it inevitably re-ignites debate about the first — because “systematic recording, monitoring and accountability” is precisely the type of governance layer that the post-NJAC MoP discussion was supposed to supply.

MoP and 'revised MoP draft'

Even in its ideal form, the MoP is not a disciplinary statute.

It is an agreed procedure for appointments/transfers under the collegium system. That said, MoP design choices can indirectly impact complaint redressal by:

● institutionalising a secretariat capable of maintaining records, tracking inputs, and ensuring consistent file movement;

● defining how adverse material/complaints are verified, escalated, and responded to; and

● placing guardrails around confidentiality vs. transparency (especially whether aggregate data can be disclosed without harming individuals).

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The government’s 2026 answer implicitly signals that, for sitting-judge complaints, the State is unwilling to displace the judiciary’s in-house primacy; instead, it positions itself as a forwarding channel (CPGRAMS “or any other form”).

That posture also mirrors the long-running institutional stance: Parliament removes; the judiciary manages ethics internally unless impeachment is triggered; the executive largely stays at arm’s length.

Nedumpara’s petition

The Justice Varma episode also foregrounded a recurring litigational strategy: complainants asking the Supreme Court to direct FIR registration / criminal investigation against a sitting judge, arguing that an in-house inquiry cannot substitute for ordinary criminal process.

Advocate Mathews J Nedumpara was among the prominent petitioners pressing this line, and reportage on the hearings captured the Court’s response that such pleas were premature while the in-house process was underway.

Nedumpara argued that allegations such as corruption or possession of illicit cash are cognisable offences and that internal committees cannot displace police powers. The Supreme Court, however, responded with a counter-logic: sequencing protects constitutional balance — preliminary internal scrutiny prevents weaponisation through frivolous FIRs, avoids reputational destruction without basis, and preserves the special constitutional route for dealing with judges.

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This tension is exactly why Parliament’s bare numbers matter: without outcome transparency, the public sees volume but not institutional responsiveness.

How to read the '8,630 complaints'

The number is not proof of widespread wrongdoing. Complaint volume can reflect ease of filing, political/interest-group mobilisation, duplicate complaints, and grievance-venting.

But the number is proof of sustained public demand for accountability pathways. That demand is legitimate in a constitutional democracy, especially for allegations of corruption or sexual misconduct.

Parliament has now put aggregate data on record; the next step — consistent with independence — is publishing aggregated disposal outcomes (without naming individuals), along with clearer institutional timelines and reasons for closure categories.