He produced an NCERT textbook which contains the following passage: “However, there are also court decisions that are considered detrimental to the best interests of common people. For example, activists working on issues of asylum and housing rights for the poor feel that recent judgments on evictions are far removed from earlier judgments.”
While recent judgments have tended to view slum dwellers as encroachers in the city, earlier judgments such as Olga Telis v. Bombay Municipal Corporation in 1985 had tried to protect the livelihood of slum dwellers,” reads the passage in the NCERT textbook.
The CJI-led bench read the passage aloud and said it had no objection to it. “This is an opinion about the verdict. People have the right to criticize the court’s verdict.”
The CJI said the criticism of the verdict was a departure from the stance taken in previous cases where textbooks mentioned corruption in the judiciary. The judge heard the petition.
Solicitor General Tushar Mehta, who happened to be present in the court, found it difficult to assuage the injury to the judiciary as the reference to judicial corruption in the Class 8 social science textbook has now been removed. Justice Aniruddha Bose, President, Judicial Academy.
The Chief Justice of India said: “In a certain case, the court held that people have no rights to the land, they are encroachers and therefore can be evicted. Others may say that these people have been living on that land for 10-15 years and therefore have a right to live there. That is their view, that is their point of view.”
“There is nothing wrong if someone says that the court’s view is wrong,” the judge said. “The opinion of an uninformed person gleaned from the judgment can never be a matter of concern to the judiciary. An uninformed person can have any opinion about the judiciary,” Mehta said.