New Delhi, Nov. 2: The Chief Justice and other Supreme Court judges today made their assets declarations public for the first time, but legal experts found much of the information sketchy and suggested some of the valuations may not have been based on market rates.

Chief Justice of India (CJI) K.G. Balakrishnan, who declared a Santro and 20 gold sovereigns, mentioned a 444-square-yard plot in Faridabad valued at Rs 4.5 lakh, which comes to around Rs 112 per square foot.

Still, a glance through the declarations by 21 sitting judges and a retired judge, now on apex court website supremecourtofindia.nic.in, suggested the average Indian judge was far less wealthy than the average politician.

Senior lawyers said the publication of the declarations was a small step for the unusually closed Indian judiciary but a big victory for the activists clamouring for greater transparency and accountability. A quick reading threw up details such as:

Justice V.S. Sirpurkar has no car but his wife owns a Ford Ikon;

Justice P. Sathasivam — a probable future CJI — has a Yamaha motorcycle bought in 2001;

Justice J.M. Panchal owes his carpenter and some traders in Ahmedabad Rs 4.19 lakh in unpaid bills, and has taken a Rs 30-lakh loan from one Ranchodbhai Virchanbhai Patel.

Justice Tarun Chatterjee, whose name is alleged to have cropped up in the Ghaziabad court treasury scandal (or provident fund scam), has not valued his declared property in monetary terms.

Many others have given the valuations for the individual entries under various heads but not given the total, making it difficult to compare their assets. A one-off calculation based on Justice H.S. Kapadia’s declaration showed he is worth nearly a crore.

Senior counsel Rajiv Dhavan, who said the apex court move was “long overdue”, appeared sceptical of the valuations. Another lawyer, who wouldn’t be quoted, said: “Those must be official land rates.”

Market rates for land are usually four to 12 times higher than government rates. Politicians’ declarations during filing of poll nominations, too, are usually based on official land rates but they still seem far wealthier generally than the judges.

Legal expert Prashant Bhushan said the information was “sketchy”. He regretted the absence of accompanying affidavits swearing that what the judges had said in their declarations was true. “In the absence of affidavits, it would be very difficult to prosecute a judge for mis-declaring his assets,” he said.

Bhushan hoped that the public would detect and point out discrepancies (between sources of income and assets) in these statements.

Once glaring mismatches come to light, a debate would begin on standardising the procedure for such declarations, he said.

The assets were so far submitted annually in a “voluntary exercise” to the CJI but treated as closed to the public.

The CJI is still fighting a case in Delhi High Court, which has ruled that information on whether individual judges had filed their assets should be available under the Right to Information Act.

However, the detailed assets break-up can only be accessed through a complicated procedure, during which the information seeker has to prove his bona fides, the high court said.

The apex court registry has appealed against the judgment. In the interim, it has bowed to public pressure and decided to place the information in the public domain.

Even this has taken a month. “Procedures would have to be first worked out,” the CJI had said after the judges unanimously decided to share the information with the public.