With CJP’s protest having taken the centrestage of politics, "cockroach" remark has become one of the most significant judicial observations of recent months, triggering criticism, social media outrage. The accusation is that Chief Justice of India Surya Kant had targeted the country's youth.The CJI says that was never the case.
In an exclusive conversation with a legal platform, the Chief Justice says that the observation was made during a discussion on lawyers who had entered the profession using fake or unrecognised law degrees, and not about students or young people.
He also spoke about another controversy surrounding the reporting of his oral remarks during mentionings, explains why he believes those observations were taken out of context and calls for a protocol governing how oral court proceedings are reported. During the conversation CJI insisted on way to see justice is to file a petition without going here and there or wasting time.
In the interview, CJI Surya Kant said “ personally, as the Chief Justice of India, or even my colleagues, we may not bother much about such adverse comments because we are used to them. But as the head of the Indian judiciary, my concern is different.Such misreporting misleads the public. It creates a wrong impression about the Indian judiciary and projects a negative image of the institution for completely baseless reasons. My concern is that the people of this country, who are entitled to know what is actually happening, should not be fed filtered and one-sided information”.My concern is that the people of this country, who are entitled to know what is actually happening, should not be fed filtered and one-sided information, he added.
When asked there was also considerable controversy surrounding your "cockroach" remark, CJI termed it as completely out of context. As for the background, he said the matter was being discussed concerned lawyers who had entered the profession on the basis of fake or false law degrees. “By fake degrees, I mean unrecognised degrees. Some people had never attended law colleges. Sitting at home, they somehow obtained degrees. I am told there are about 48,000 such lawyers in the country whose law degrees were never issued by the universities they claim”, he elaborated.
"The discussion was about how these fake lawyers have become problematic in the legal system. It was in that context that I said they were virtually like cockroaches. My observation was made only in that context, about where they were coming from and how they had entered the system.It was never about the youth. That is why I said I had been completely misquoted”, he said adding that the discussion was about how these fake lawyers have become problematic in the legal system...It was in that context that I said they were virtually like cockroaches", CJI clarified, reiterating the context was intrepreted as completely wrong.
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