Discontent with the Indian Judiciary
From the famous dialogue in the web series Maamla Legal hai, “accused lawyer se madad maangta hai, lekin judge se mannat”, to the dialogue of web series Gram Chikitsalaya, “dunia me kanoon ka Nirman nyay dene ke lie nahi, wakeel ka ghar chalane ke lie hua tha”, the image of the judiciary in the eyes of common people has been sacrosanct. They usually never badmouth the judiciary or legal system, despite the fact that cases have been pending for many years. They trust their lawyers and the judges that their issue will be resolved, although it may take too much time. Therefore, they always approach courts and fight the legal battle.
Today, a self-appearing petitioner
created a scene in the Supreme Court. A petitioner-in-person named Prabal Pratap created
an uproar in the Supreme Court before a bench of Justice K.V. Viswanathan and
Justice Alok Aradhe. He told the bench, "Mr. judicial servant, I order
you to order the registration of FIR against ACP Vikas Nagar, Lucknow,"
to which Justice Viswanathan responded by asking if he was ordering the judges.
He then threw the papers relating to his case into the air and began hurling
abuses in the courtroom, including offensive remarks against the Chief Justice
of India. Security personnel had to step in and escort him out of the
courtroom. What stood out, however, was the Court's response. Despite the
disturbance, the bench chose not to initiate contempt proceedings or take any
other action against him, and Justice Viswanathan expressed sympathy for the
petitioner, noting that he seemed deeply disturbed. This restraint is worth
pausing on, because it complicates the narrative of an institution that only
punishes and never listens. It became a sensation within minutes
on X and Instagram. Some people are laughing over it, some are adding to the
disrespect, while others are enjoying the same silently. It is not clear why he
did the same, whether it was merely a publicity stunt or something else.
Whatever it is, this is not good for the stature of the Hon’ble courts of the
country. This
was, notably, not an isolated flashpoint. Earlier, on 6 October 2025, advocate
Rakesh Kishore attempted to remove and throw a shoe at then Chief Justice B.R.
Gavai during open court proceedings, in what was described as a rare and
unprecedented breach of security and decorum. Kishore was reportedly motivated
by his disapproval of remarks the CJI had made in an earlier hearing regarding
a plea related to a Hindu deity. Rather than pursue punitive action, CJI Gavai
said he would rather let the incident die a natural death than fuel further
social media debates, though the Supreme Court Bar Association went on to seek
criminal contempt proceedings with the Attorney General's approval. The Bar
Council of India eventually suspended Kishore's license, and the Supreme Court
Bar Association terminated his membership. Two episodes, months apart, both
converging on the same bench and the same underlying anxiety: that courtroom
decorum, long taken for granted, is fraying at the edges. These
raise big questions on the safety and security of judges and lawyers, but also
the emerging discontent from the judiciary of the country.
On 14 March 2025, a fire broke out at Delhi High Court judge Yashwant
Varma's official residence, and firefighters who arrived allegedly discovered
stacks of burnt and half-burnt five-hundred-rupee notes in a storeroom, a scene
widely described as shocking. The judiciary, to its credit, did not attempt to
bury the matter. Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna constituted a three-member
committee that examined 55 witnesses over ten days and reviewed CCTV footage,
photographs, and video evidence. The committee ultimately found strong evidence
that Justice Varma and his family had covert or active control of the storeroom,
and concluded that the misconduct was serious enough to warrant proceedings for
his removal. Varma has consistently denied the allegations, calling the entire
episode a conspiracy, and has not been assigned judicial work since. The case
is significant not because it proves systemic rot, but because it shows the
internal machinery of accountability actually working, however slowly and
imperfectly, in full public view.
It is this last point that critics, including several YouTubers and social
media commentators, often overlook when they paint the judiciary with a broad
brush of corruption or bias. Such allegations deserve to be taken seriously
precisely because institutions that adjudicate the fate of over a billion
people cannot be above scrutiny. But sweeping charges of partiality, made in
the heat of a single unfavourable order or an offhand remark, tend to flatten a
far more layered reality. Judges do, at times, make observations from the bench
that appear to stray beyond the scope of the case. Such remarks understandably
invite public criticism, since courts are expected to confine themselves to the
questions of law before them. Yet it is equally true that oral observations
made during a hearing are not the same as a considered, written judgment, and
conflating the two often fuels outrage disproportionate to the actual legal
outcome.
The charge that judges take "too much leave" while cases pile up
also deserves a fairer hearing than it usually gets. The scale of the backlog
is undeniable: there were 54 million cases pending across India's district,
high, and Supreme courts at the end of 2025, with nearly 48 million of these in
district and subordinate courts alone. But the roots of this backlog lie less
in individual judges' work ethic and more in structural starvation of the
system. As of early 2025, judge vacancies stood at 33% in high courts and 21%
in subordinate courts, with some high courts, such as Allahabad, exceeding 50%
vacancy. India's actual judge strength works out to only about 15 judges per
million people, well short of the Law Commission's 1987 recommendation of 50
judges per million. Judges who are sitting are far from idle: each district
court judge handles roughly 2,200 cases on average, a number that climbs far
higher in states like Uttar Pradesh, where it reaches around 4,300. Framed
against this backdrop, "leave" looks less like indulgence and more
like a symptom of an institution running on a skeleton staff against an
ever-growing docket.
None of this is to say the judiciary is beyond reproach. Opacity in the
collegium system, delays in judicial appointments, and the slow pace of
internal accountability mechanisms are all legitimate grounds for public
disquiet. Nor should courtroom disruptions be normalised merely because judges
have shown forbearance towards individual litigants; repeated tolerance of
abuse, however well-intentioned, risks eroding the very decorum that gives
courts their authority. Equally, viral outrage manufactured for clicks does a
disservice to genuine reform by reducing complex institutional failures to
caricature. What the last two years reveal, then, is not a judiciary in
terminal decline, but one visibly under strain: overworked, understaffed,
occasionally embarrassed by its own members, yet still capable of investigating
itself and absorbing public fury without descending into either paralysis or
authoritarian defensiveness. The common citizen's instinctive trust in courts is not naive; it is, in fact, a reasonable bet on an
institution that remains flawed but functioning. The way forward lies not in
choosing between blind faith and cynical dismissal, but in sustained, informed
pressure: filling vacancies, strengthening transparency in judicial
appointments and inquiries, and insisting that both judges and litigants meet
the courtroom with the seriousness it demands. Only such balanced scrutiny,
rather than viral condemnation or silent reverence, can help the judiciary meet
the discontent it currently faces.
