"Constitutional morality is the fulcrum which acts as an essential check upon the high functionaries and citizens alike…"In view of the above observation of the Supreme Court, explain the concept of constitutional morality and its application to ensure balance between judicial independence and judicial accountability in India.

The concept

In Manoj Narula v. Union of India, Government of NCT of Delhi v. Union of India, Navtej Singh Johar, and Indian Young Lawyers Association (Sabarimala), the Court treated constitutional morality as reason, dignity, equality and institutional process against majoritarian or official convenience. It is not the judge’s private ethics. It is the public morality of the document: Articles 14, 19, 21, federal courtesy, and the separation of powers.

High functionaries are checked when they are told that a majority in the House still cannot smash the basic structure, that a Governor is not a viceroy, that a Speaker’s defection clock is not a toy. Citizens are checked when religious passion, street veto or “hurt sentiment” cannot erase another’s rights. The same fulcrum therefore presses upward and sideways.

Independence and accountability of the judiciary

• Independence is itself a piece of constitutional morality: Articles 124–147, security of tenure, salaries charged on the Consolidated Fund, power to punish contempt, and the collegium after the Second and Third Judges cases. Without independence, morality in the rest of the State has no forum.

Accountability is the other half. A judiciary that is only independent can become a guild. Constitutional morality here means:

• Impeachment (Articles 124(4) and 218) as the democratic extreme, used rarely because the bar is high, not because judges are angels.
• The in-house procedure and the Restatement of Values of Judicial Life (1999) for conduct short of impeachment — opaque, but an admission that peers must judge peers.
• K. Veeraswami on criminal process against a judge, with presidential consultation.
• NJAC (99th Amendment) struck down in Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association (2015): the Court held that executive-heavy appointment would wound independence. Critics fairly say the Court used morality to shield the guild from a representative commission. Constitutional morality does not end the argument; it raises the burden on any new design to protect both halves.
• Live-streaming (Swapnil Tripathi), asset disclosure, reasoned recusals, and a complaints mechanism that is not only a secret letter to the CJI.

Balance is not 50 percent politics in every appointment. It is appointment that is not a ministry’s list, plus discipline that is not a closed shop. A Judicial Complaints Authority with a judicial majority and a public annual report would sit inside constitutional morality better than either NJAC’s original executive tilt or a collegium that never explains a transfer.

The Court’s own observation in the question is therefore double-edged. If constitutional morality binds the citizen’s riot and the minister’s ordinance, it also binds the judge’s unexplained collegium minute.