Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Monday (May 25, 2026) asked a lawyer to not take the continued online frenzy over his reported use of the word “cockroach” in a court hearing so “sentimentally”.
The Chief Justice was reacting to a lawyer, advocate N.K. Goswami, who expressed anxiety at the manner in which a courtroom observation from the Bench is being “distorted” online despite a clarification from the top judge.
Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s reported references to “cockroach” in reference to fake law degree holders during the hearing of a writ petition on May 15 spawned a public furore and a viral online platform, Cockroach Janta Party.
The Chief Justice had clarified the next day in a statement that he was misquoted by sections of the media and had the greatest concern and respect for the youths of the country.
On Monday, Chief Justice Kant said there was “no grave urgency” to entertain a writ petition filed by an apex court lawyer seeking a probe into the “activities” of a “digital-political formation”, Cockroach Janta Party, and the commercial exploitation, trademark appropriation and monetised circulation of oral remarks made in court proceedings.
Advocate Raja Choudhary has arraigned the Union government, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, Bar Council of India and the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as respondents in the case.
Mr. Choudhary, represented by advocate Rajesh Singh Chouhan, has said the petition was not an attack on fair criticism, democratic dissent, satire, and constitutionally protected free speech, but a challenge to organised commercial exploitation and distortion of solemn court hearings into a “viral spectacle” online.
He has said judicial hearings and exchanges between judges and lawyers metamorphose into clipped fragments, outrage algorithms, trolling cultures, meme warfare, emotional mobilisation, and monetised virality.
“Isolated fragments of oral proceedings are selectively clipped, meme-ified, mimicked, commercially circulated, and transformed into viral digital content detached from constitutional and procedural context,” the petition has said.
Who is Abhijeet Dipke? Inside the viral Cockroach Janta Party movement
The petition said that vernacular, culturally direct and non-elite modes of institutional speech associated with rural and non-metropolitan traditions are increasingly subjected to disproportionate ridicule within elite digital ecosystems.
It argued that the spontaneous use of metaphorical expressions like ‘cockroach’ only reflected institutional frustration and procedural anxiety at the deterioration of legal professionals’ standards. The petition has sought a CBI probe into the proliferation of fake law degrees across the country.
Mr. Choudhary has asserted that metaphorical references involving animals, insects, vermin, creatures or symbolic imagery have historically existed within literature, jurisprudence, constitutional discourse, political theory and legal philosophy.
Such expressions, he said, were recognised tools for expressing institutional anxiety, bureaucratic alienation, procedural disorder, collapse of communication between individuals and authority systems and symbolic commentary upon social behaviour.
He has flagged that Indian constitutional discourse and judicial traditions have historically employed metaphors like ‘jungle raj’, ‘watchdog’, ‘guinea pig’ to describe governance failures, institutional accountability and constitutional anxieties.
Published - May 25, 2026 12:01 pm IST
Source: The Hindu - India News
