Supreme Court Judge Who Used The Media To Protest Against CJI, Slams Assam NRC Officials For Speaking To The Press

On 12 January, four senior supreme court judges namely J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, M B Lokur and Kurian Joseph had addressed a joint press conference, to express displeasure with Chief Justice Dipak Misra and his manner of assigning cases.

This act of going to the press was considered as unprecedented by the legal fraternity, some of whom even termed it as shocking.

Now about seven months later a Supreme Court (SC) bench comprising of one of the “press-conference judges” has slammed coordinators of Assam National Register of Citizens (NRC) for speaking to the media.

As reported by The Hindu, the SC bench comprising of Justices Ranjan Gogoi and Rohinton Fali Nariman threatened to jail the Assam NRC coordinator and registrar for contempt of court.

According to the report, the Coordinator Prateek Hajela and Registrar General Sailesh had described to the media how they planned to deal with “claims and objections” raised by those 40 lakh individuals not included in the NRC.

The report quotes Justice Nariman as asking what compelled the officers to go to the press. The Judge also observed that it’s not the officers’ job to do so.

Justice Gogoi too took a stern view of the matter and asked the NRC Coordinator, who was he to give such interviews to the press. After reading out excerpts from the coordinator’s press interview, he questioned whether he had any issues with the claims and objections’ procedure.

Justice Gogoi also commented that, “We should hold both of you (NRC officials), guilty of contempt and send you to jail”.

A Times of India report claimed that the Supreme Court bench also made it clear that the officials are not to speak to the media in the future.