In a significant move aimed at promoting transparency, the Supreme Court of India on Tuesday, May 6, publicly disclosed the asset declarations of its judges. The personal assets and liabilities—including movable and immovable properties, investments, and debts—of both Supreme Court judges and their spouses have been uploaded on the court’s official website.
“The Full Court of the Supreme Court of India has on 1st April, 2025 decided that the statement of assets of the Judges of this Court shall be placed in the public domain by uploading the same on the website of this Court. Statements of assets of Judges already received are being uploaded. Statement of assets of other Judges will be uploaded as and when the current statement of assets is received,” said a press release issued by the apex court.
The details of the assets and liabilities can be found here.
At present, the apex court is functioning with 33 judges, and 21 of them have uploaded their asset declarations so far, as per the information available on the official website. The sanctioned strength of the Supreme Court is 34 judges, including the Chief Justice of India (CJI).
The 12 judges who are yet to upload their data are Justices JK Maheshwari, BV Nagarathna, Dipankar Datta, Ahsanuddin Amanullah, Manoj Misra, Aravind Kumar, Prashant Kumar Mishra, Satish Chandra Sharma, Prasanna Bhalachandra Varale, N Kotiswar Singh, R Mahadevan, and Joymalya Bagchi.
All the judges of the Supreme Court had agreed to declare their assets and upload the details on the apex court website in the interest of restoring public confidence in the judiciary and promoting transparency.
The move is seen as a response to the cash recovery incident at the residence of a Delhi High Court judge on March 14. Amid an in-house inquiry, the judge was recommended for transfer to the Allahabad High Court.
Further, placing the declaration of assets on the Supreme Court website will be "mandatory" in terms of the latest Resolution of the Full Court.
Earlier, the Supreme Court, in a Full Court Meeting held on May 7, 1997, resolved that every Judge should make a declaration of all his assets in the form of real estate or investments (held by him in his own name or in the name of his spouse or any person dependent on him) within a reasonable time of assuming office.
“The declaration so made should be to the Chief Justice of the Court. The Chief Justice should make a similar declaration for the purpose of the record. The declaration made by the Judges or the Chief Justice, as the case may be, shall be confidential,” it said.
Later in August 2009, the Full Bench decided to disclose the statement of assets submitted by the Judges to the public by putting it on the Supreme Court website “purely on a voluntary basis”.
(With IANS inputs)