Judiciary is facing a recurrent problem in comments from the Bench caught on camera

A view of the Supreme Court of India in New Delhi. Video clips featuring “random, unwarranted” remarks made by judges in court have drawn much flak from the public, putting the judiciary led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud in a spot. 
| Photo Credit: Sushil Kumar Verma

Video clips featuring “random, unwarranted” remarks made by judges in court have drawn much flak from the public, putting the judiciary led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) D.Y. Chandrachud in a spot.

Footage of Karnataka High Court judge V. Srishananda’s oral reference to a Muslim-dominant area in Bengaluru as “Pakistan” while hearing a landlord-tenant dispute and his remarks, seen as gender insensitive, to a woman lawyer, saw a five-judge Bench headed by Chief Justice Chandrachud assemble quickly on September 20 to seek a report from the High Court.

This is the second time in successive months that the Bench headed by the CJI and the four senior most judges of the Supreme Court are gathering to look into High Court judges’ conduct in court.

On August 7, the Bench presided over suo motu proceedings against Punjab and Haryana High Court judge, Rajbir Sehrawat, over an order/observations made in court.

In its judicial order, the Bench had cautioned judges against making “random, gratuitous and unwarranted remarks” in the course of hearings, and to be mindful that proceedings were live-streamed. The apex court had warned judges that such comments, proliferated on video, tended to cause “incalculable harm to the sanctity of the judicial process”.

“In an age where there is widespread reporting of every proceeding which takes place in the court, particularly in the context of live-streaming which is intended to provide access to justice to citizens, it is all the more necessary that judges exercise due restraint and responsibility in observations made in the course of proceedings… We hope and trust that circumspection shall be exercised in the future,” the Bench, also comprising Justices Sanjiv Khanna, B.R. Gavai, Surya Kant, and Hrishiskesh Roy, observed in the order.

In fact, the 16th tenet of the ‘Restatement of the Values of Judicial Life’, a code of judicial ethics adopted by the Supreme Court in 1997, requires “every judge at all times to be conscious that he is under the public gaze and there should be no act or omission by him which is unbecoming of the high office he occupies and the public esteem in which the office is held”.

So far, Chief Justice Chandrachud has refused to gag reportage or social media posts sourced from live-streamed court proceedings. Live-streaming was described as the true realisation of the open court system in the apex court’s Swapnil Tripathi judgment of 2018.

Yet, the court recently saw senior advocate Kapil Sibal, appearing for the State of West Bengal in the R.G. Kar Medical College and Hospital rape and murder case, make an impassioned plea before the CJI Bench to stop live-streaming of the case proceedings. He said his colleagues in the case, including women, were receiving threats.

Now, with the videos of Justice Srishananda’s comments circulating on social media, the Advocates Association of Bengaluru has written to Karnataka Chief Justice N.V. Anjaria to stop live-streaming “until there is sensitisation on views that could be aired in open courts”.