The Chief Justice of India N V Ramana on Saturday, while listing issues facing the present-day judiciary, said that several media organisations in the country were running “kangaroo court on issues even experienced judges find difficult to decide on”.
Speaking at an event at the National University of Study & Research in Law in Ranchi, the CJI said: “Ill-informed and agenda-driven debates on issues involving justice delivery are proving to be detrimental to the health of democracy. Biased views being propagated by media are affecting the people, weakening democracy, and harming the system. In this process, justice delivery gets adversely affected.”
He added that the media was taking democracy backwards by overstepping and breaching their responsibilities. “Print media still has certain degree of accountability. Whereas, electronic media has zero accountability as what it shows vanishes into thin year. Still worse is social media,” the CJI said.
“It is best for the media to self-regulate and measure their words. You should not overstep and invite interference, either from the government or from the courts. Judges may not react immediately. Please don’t mistake it to be a weakness or helplessness. When liberties are exercised responsibly, within their domains, there will be no necessity of placing reasonable or proportionate external restrictions,” CJI Ramana said.
Speaking about the increase in physical attacks on judges, CJI Ramana asserted that while politicians, bureaucrats, police officers and other public representatives were often provided with security even after their retirement owing to the sensitiveness of their jobs, “ironically, judges are not extended similar protection”.
“These days, we are witnessing an increasing number of physical attacks on judges…Judges have to live in the same society as the people that they have been convicted, without any security or assurance of safety,” the CJI was quoted as saying.
