Don’t waste our time: When the last refuge refuses to listen

A profound silence often falls over a courtroom when the institution serving as the ultimate refuge for citizens declines to hear a plea. Such a moment unfolded Wednesday at the Supreme Court of India. A lawyer urgently mentioned a petition on behalf of students who had been protesting at Delhi’s Jantar Mantar. For over a month, thousands of young aspirants had gathered to demand accountability for the repeated leaks of the NEET-UG examination papers. The counsel stated he possessed video evidence of excessive police action against the demonstrators and requested the matter be listed for the following day.

Presiding over the bench, Chief Justice of India (CJI) Surya Kant, alongside Justices Joymalya Bagchi and V. Mohana, declined the urgent listing. Citing the heavy demands on the Court’s schedule, the CJI reportedly remarked, “We are not interested in videos, we don’t have time to watch.” He further added, “Don’t waste our time, and don’t waste your time.” With FIRs already registered against the demonstrators, the students — many of whose futures depend on these very examinations — remained on the streets as the Court proceeded to its next judicial item.

The backdrop to this legal appeal is deeply troubling. Widespread media reports have indicated that state-sponsored elements entered the peaceful protest of students to deliberately disrupt it with violence and vandalism. Furthermore, severe allegations of police brutality have surfaced. Petitions and eyewitness accounts presented before the Delhi High Court alleged devastating force used against minors and girls. Reports claim that law enforcement personnel not only engaged in pelting stones at the students but also resorted to using nail-studded lathis to inhumanly injure the peaceful protestors.

To understand the full context of this confrontation, one must look back to remarks made from the same bench earlier in the year. On May 15, while hearing a separate matter regarding the designation of senior advocates, CJI Surya Kant made an oral observation noting that “there are youngsters like cockroaches, they don’t get any employment, they don’t have any place in profession,” suggesting such individuals turn to social media and RTI activism to attack the system. The analogy sparked immediate public debate. The Chief Justice subsequently issued a clarification, noting that the remark was specifically directed at individuals entering professions with fake degrees, rather than India’s unemployed youth.

Despite the clarification, a satirical youth collective calling itself the “Cockroach Janata Party” (CJP) was formed in response, rapidly gathering tens of thousands of members. It was this very collective that helped organise the NEET-UG protests at Jantar Mantar two months later.

It would also be unbalanced to pretend the movement’s own character has gone unquestioned. NDA leaders, including some BJP activists, have said the students’ cause was genuine but that the platform was later “hijacked by Left and Right groups” alike, pointing to the presence of Opposition figures such as Sharad Pawar and Omar Abdullah, the latter raising the unrelated demand for Jammu and Kashmir’s statehood from the protest stage. An episode of stone-pelting and damaged police vehicles on July 20 gave the government’s case further ammunition, even as CJP organisers blamed the police for the escalation.

Curiously, the counter-charge cuts both ways: some commentators have pointed to CJP’s own murky origins and its founders’ past links to the Aam Aadmi Party to suggest the outfit may itself have begun in May as a ruling-party-sponsored diversion from Congress’s paper-leak campaign, before slipping out of anyone’s control. Both theories cannot be true, and neither is proven; what is certain is that a movement which began over examination fraud is now claimed, and disowned, by every political camp — which makes the Court’s refusal to even examine the video evidence of violence against its participants harder, not easier, to explain. What makes the broader discourse surrounding judicial responsiveness impossible to ignore is that some of the most prominent calls for introspection have originated from within the judiciary itself. Barely four months ago, sitting Supreme Court judge Justice Ujjal Bhuyan addressed the Supreme Court Bar Association’s National Conference in Bengaluru. He candidly observed that “many within the judiciary continue to suffer from the more loyal than the king syndrome,” resulting in citizens languishing in jails for extended periods.

Citing data that showed UAPA conviction rates lingering at roughly three to four per cent, Justice Bhuyan questioned the justification for prolonged pre-trial incarceration. He also expressed concern over the “reckless registration of FIRs even for trivial matters,” which inevitably consume the apex court’s valuable time. Coming from a sitting judge, this was a profound moment of institutional self-reflection.

This echoes a historic precedent of internal judicial critique. In January 2018, four of the Supreme Court’s senior-most judges—Justices Jasti Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan Lokur, and Kurian Joseph—held an unprecedented press conference. They cautioned that “unless this institution is preserved and maintains its equanimity, democracy will not survive in this country,” raising specific concerns over the allocation of politically sensitive cases.

Subsequent developments regarding the participants of that press conference added a complex layer to this historical moment. Following his retirement, Justice Gogoi — who had previously noted in court that post-retirement appointments could be viewed as a “scar on the independence of the judiciary” — accepted a nomination to the Rajya Sabha. Reacting to this, his former colleague Justice Kurian Joseph publicly remarked that the acceptance of the nomination had “certainly shaken the confidence of the common man on the independence of judiciary.”

None of this implies that judicial delays are born of malice, nor does it discount the crushing, almost impossible caseloads that the Supreme Court manages daily. There is a long, respectable tradition of judicial restraint when protests intersect with complex law-and-order situations. However, public and legal commentators often look to the consistency of judicial urgency.

The legal fraternity frequently contrasts the swift listing and relief granted in cases involving prominent public figures — where courts have passionately urged the upholding of personal liberty — with the prolonged incarceration of ordinary citizens or ageing undertrials in custody awaiting a bail hearing.

The solution to these civic anxieties does not lie in undermining the judiciary, an institution that undeniably remains the strongest pillar of Indian democracy and the ultimate forum for the voiceless. Instead, the remedy lies in the very institutional consistency championed by judges like Justice Bhuyan and the four senior justices of 2018. A steadfast uniformity in practice — ensuring that the grievances of ordinary students facing police batons at Jantar Mantar receive the same urgent judicial consideration as the appeals of the powerful — will safeguard the Court’s legacy. Until such consistency becomes the unshakeable norm, the Court’s moments of impatience risk being interpreted by the public as the loudest verdicts it delivers.

(The writer is with

the Cholleti BlackRobe Chambers, Hyderabad, and writes on economy, politics and law.)