The Chief Justice of India Surya Kant on Monday (May 25, 2026) asked a lawyer to not take the continued online frenzy over his (CJI Kant’s) 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 was being “distorted” online despite a clarification from the top judge.
The CJI’s reported remark on “cockroaches” with reference to fake law degree holders during the hearing of a writ petition on May 15, 2026 spawned a public furore, and a viral online platform, the Cockroach Janta Party.
The Chief Justice had clarified the following day in a statement that he had been misquoted by sections of the media, and had the greatest concern and respect for the youth 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”, the Cockroach Janta Party, and the commercial exploitation, trademark appropriation, and monetised circulation of oral remarks made in court proceedings.
The petitioner, advocate Raja Choudhary, has arraigned the Union government, the Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology, the 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.
Judicial hearings and exchanges between judges and lawyers metamorphose into clipped fragments, outrage algorithms, trolling cultures, meme warfare, emotional mobilisation, and monetised virality, Mr. Choudhary has said.
“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.
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Vernacular, culturally direct and non-elite modes of institutional speech associated with rural and non-metropolitan traditions were increasingly subjected to disproportionate ridicule within elite digital ecosystems, the petition has said.
The petition argued that the spontaneous use of metaphorical expressions like ‘cockroach’ only reflected institutional frustration and procedural anxiety at the deterioration of standards in legal professionals. The petition has sought a CBI probe into the proliferation of fake law degrees across the country.
Metaphorical references involving animals, insects, vermin, creatures or symbolic imagery have historically existed within literature, jurisprudence, constitutional discourse, political theory and legal philosophy, Mr. Choudhary has asserted.
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.
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, the petition said.
Published – May 25, 2026 12:01 pm IST
