The National Judicial Council, NJC, has directed that judges participating in “sensitive and highly visible trials such as election petition proceedings” must declare their personal assets before and after conclusion of such cases.
To give effect to the directive, the council, yesterday, constituted a 10-man Judicial Ethics Committee with a mandate to review the code of conduct for judicial officers in the country.
According to the NJC, henceforth, judges entrusted with sensitive cases, “may be required to submit themselves to dedicated assets declaration.” Also, allegations of misconduct against judicial officers or employees of the Judiciary shall not be leaked or published in the media.
It said the Revised Judicial Code of Conduct will contain, among other things, sanctions for persistent under-performance, inability to utilize time efficiently, low standard of judicial management and persistent failure by judges to comply with sitting requirements as well as, “provisions relating to the responsibility of judicial officers, so as to avoid inordinate and excessive length of proceedings causing delay in justice delivery.”
The legal body said it has mandated a Judicial Performance and Evaluation Committee to request various heads of courts to compile and submit regular statistics of ages of pending cases.