Patna, Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Saturday asserted that the judiciary is committed to “protecting” students’ fundamental right to hold peaceful protests and that courts will not look the other way when there is an infringement.
The allusion was to the Jantar Mantar protests in Delhi against NEET exam paper leaks, spearheaded by the Cockroach Janata Party, which, incidentally, began as a satirical online campaign against a remark made by the CJI in the Supreme Court, though he later claimed that his utterances had been reported out of context.
A question was posed by a girl student about “police response to peaceful students’ protests”, according to a CNLU statement. The CJI told the questioner that “courts will not look the other way” when faced with cases of alleged brutal repression by the police and “unequivocally reaffirmed the judiciary’s commitment to protecting students’ peaceful right to protest”. Noting that “transparency has its limits when personal dignity is at stake”, the CJI asked, “How can a chief justice or a judge continue to work if a negative observation about him is included in the collegium’s minutes? The CJI visited the campus along with Patna High Court Chief Justice V Kameswar Rao, who is also the Chancellor of the University, according to the CNLU statement. The CJI also lauded as “a new, welcome idea” a proposal by CNLU Vice Chancellor and noted jurist Faizan Mustafa “to compress five-year law degree into four years of academic study and mandatory court apprenticeship in the final year”, which could “eliminate the separate one-year practice requirement for judicial service examinations”.
