When the frame is financial, the lens becomes constitutional
Andhra Pradesh High Court
The question that most urgently needs an answer is being largely ignored: Why does Andhra Pradesh not have a comprehensive, rule-based framework for optical and ancillary medical entitlements for its High Court judges and their dependent family members — one that does not require a fresh Government Order every time a spectacle frame needs replacing? The absence of such a framework is a governance failure, and its cost is measured not in rupees but in the needless erosion of public trust in the judiciary.
There is something almost poignant about the image: a judge, one of the guardians of constitutional rights for millions of people in Andhra Pradesh, buying a pair of spectacles for an aging parent. It is an act of filial love as ordinary and universal as any other. And yet, when the soft copy of Government Order No. 222, issued by the Andhra Pradesh government on July 20, began circulating on social media, what followed was anything but ordinary.
The order reimbursed a sitting judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court a sum of Rs 7,250 — the cost of those spectacles purchased in Vijayawada on May 27 for the judge’s father. The amount is, by any reasonable measure, modest. The controversy it ignited is not.
The facts without distortion:
Let us first be precise about what happened, because precision matters enormously when the judiciary is involved.
The judge submitted a reimbursement claim under the provisions that entitle serving High Court judges and their dependent family members to medical and hospitalisation benefits at par with a Cabinet Minister of the state government — a facility explicitly embedded in the High Court Judges (Salaries and Conditions of Service) Act, 1954, and the High Court Judges Rules, 1956. This is not a privilege invented on a whim; it is a statutory entitlement recognised by Parliament.
The snag arose at the first hurdle. The High Court’s medical officer examined the bill and concluded, technically correctly, that spectacles do not qualify as medicines under the existing rules for reimbursement. The claim was therefore not automatically processable. At this point, the High Court’s registrar general stepped in, writing to the state government to treat the matter as a special case and relax the rules to allow the disbursement.
The government obliged and issued GO 222. Journalists obtained the soft copy and posted it on social media. The internet, predictably, did the rest.
The legitimate public concern:
Public discourse following the order has been markedly divided. A significant volume of opinion suggests that the judge was simply exercising a recognized statutory entitlement, viewing the reimbursement as a transparent administrative matter. There is considerable merit to this view. The utilization of a provided benefit is consistent with established service conditions, and it would be a mischaracterization to view a standard request for reimbursement as a departure from professional propriety. Availing oneself of a legal provision is a matter of procedural right, and it is important to distinguish individual actions from the broader systemic questions the incident raises.
But the more thoughtful strand of public discomfort points elsewhere, and it deserves to be heard rather than dismissed.
The concern is not about whether spectacles are worth Rs 7,250. The concern is structural. A sitting High Court judge — one who may, on any given day, be hearing cases in which the State of Andhra Pradesh is a party — has received a discretionary executive favour from that very State. The government was under no automatic legal obligation to relax its own rules. It chose to. That choice, however benign its intent, creates a visible thread of financial patronage running from the executive to the judiciary, and it is that thread which troubles the constitutionally conscientious observer.
What the constitution says and why it matters:
India’s constitutional framework is unequivocal about the financial independence of the higher judiciary. The salaries and allowances of High Court judges are charged to the Consolidated Fund of the respective State — meaning they are not subject to a legislative vote — precisely to prevent financial manipulation by the political executive. The Supreme Court, in Union of India vs. Pratibha Bonnerjea (1995), noted that the Constitution’s design is to insulate the judiciary from outside influence, including executive influence.
This insulation is not merely symbolic. International jurisprudence on judicial independence, including the UN Basic Principles on the Independence of the Judiciary (1985) recognises that a judiciary financially dependent on the executive is a judiciary that, even if perfectly impartial in practice, cannot be perceived as impartial by the public. Perception, in matters of justice, is not a luxury — it is the foundation on which the entire edifice of public confidence rests.
A systemic gap, not a personal failing:
The more instructive comparison here is with Maharashtra. Back in July 2020, the Maharashtra government issued a structured Government Resolution providing Bombay High Court judges with a fixed annual allowance of Rs 50,000 for the purchase of spectacles and eyewear — covering the judge, their spouse, and dependent family members — without requiring any case-by-case executive discretion or rule relaxation. The benefit was systemic, rule-based, and therefore devoid of the whiff of personalised patronage.
That is precisely the distinction the Andhra Pradesh episode lays bare. When a benefit is structured, rule-governed, and automatic, neither the judiciary nor the executive is placed in an uncomfortable position. When administrative relief requires the executive to exercise discretionary exception-making on behalf of a specific individual judge, it establishes precisely the kind of institutional entanglement that constitutional design seeks to prevent. The concern is not rooted in any impropriety on the part of the judge, but rather in the structural vulnerability created when the judiciary must petition the executive for rule relaxations. This dynamic — where the bench depends on the goodwill of the State to accommodate requests falling outside established norms — introduces the very appearance of obligation that judicial independence is designed to eliminate.
The question nobody is really asking:
Amidst the noise of social media outrage and counter-defence, the question that most urgently needs an answer is being largely ignored: Why does Andhra Pradesh not have a comprehensive, rule-based framework for optical and ancillary medical entitlements for its High Court judges and their dependent family members — one that does not require a fresh Government Order every time a spectacle frame needs replacing?
The absence of such a framework is a governance failure, and its cost is measured not in rupees but in the needless erosion of public trust in the judiciary.
Proportionality and what lies beyond it:
It would be tempting to conclude that by offering reassurance that Rs 7,250 represents an inconsequential sum and that judicial independence cannot be materially affected by a single administrative favour of this magnitude. That reassurance, while probably accurate, misses the point entirely.
The constitutional principle at issue concerns the institutional mechanism through which executive and judicial branches interact on matters of judicial welfare. When the executive is positioned to make discretionary decisions regarding benefits for sitting judges — absent a pre-established statutory framework — it creates a structural dependency that departs from the constitutional design of separation of powers. This is not a reflection on any individual judge’s conduct or the executive’s intentions in this instance. Rather, it is an observation about institutional architecture: constitutional democracy functions optimally when the judiciary’s operational needs are met through predictable, rule-based mechanisms rather than through case-by-case executive discretion. The Maharashtra precedent (establishing a fixed annual allowance for judicial eyewear) demonstrates that such systemic solutions are administratively feasible and constitutionally preferable to discretionary exception-making.
The remedy is not outrage directed at the judge. It is the urgent rationalisation of judicial entitlement frameworks across all State Governments, bringing them into alignment with the constitutional imperative of judicial financial autonomy.
Until that is done, incidents like GO 222 will keep surfacing, and the public’s uncomfortable questions will remain — fairly and legitimately — unanswered.
(The writer is with the Cholleti BlackRobe Chambers, Hyderabad, and writes on economy, politics and law)
