Bar President defends CJI Surya Kant's 'cockroach' rebuttal, claims 40% lawyers have fake degrees

In an attempt to defend Chief Justice of India Surya Kant’s controversial “cockroach” remark, Bar Council of India President Manan Kumar Mishra said the chief justice was referring to those who obtain “fake degrees”.

While in an interview with the IANS news agency in Delhi, Mishra said, “The Chief Justice was referring to those who get fake degrees, wear black coats, belts and gowns and appear in court. That statement was about them. The background of that situation was different.”

Mishra claimed that around 35-40% of lawyers in India have a fake degree. He told a news agency, “When the Bar Council of India started the degree verification process, about 40% of the lawyers did not fill the verification forms. These 40% of the lawyers are suspected to be fake.” He added that the issue was brought to the notice of CJI Surya Kant who reportedly asked the CBI to investigate the issue.

Mishra made the statement while giving his views on the Janata Party’s Cockroach movement on social media, which emerged after an oral commentary delivered by the Chief Justice of India.

The Cockroach Controversy

On May 15, the Chief Justice of India courted controversy by comparing unemployed youth to cockroaches and allegedly said they would “become” media, social media and RTI activists and attack the system.

The next day, he issued a terse explanation, saying: “It pains me to read how a section of the media misquoted my oral observations I made during yesterday’s frivolous case hearing.

Kant firmly emphasized that his observations were aimed solely at individuals who infiltrate the legal system using “false and bogus titles”, claiming that his words had been “misquoted by a section of the media”.

The controversy spawned a viral, satirical social media movement called the Cockroach Janta Party – which quickly gained millions of social media followers; has X account suspended; and crossed BJP’s Instagram followers.

Mishra, who is also a Rajya Sabha MP, alleged that the CJI’s comments were aimed at legal practitioners regarding the suspected “bogus degrees”.

“Their degrees are absolutely bogus; they have made them somewhere or bought them from somewhere and they practice in courts based on that,” Mishra said. He claimed that the Bar Council would issue a detailed media statement on the matter tomorrow.

He had supposedly had raised the issue of lawyers with fake degrees as early as 2015 during a lawyers’ meet organized by the Chennai Bar Council.