'People have the right to criticise judgments,' says Supreme Court

The Supreme Court on Friday refused to entertain a plea seeking removal of a remark against its verdicts from NCERT's old class 8 Social Science textbook, saying that people have a right to criticise them.

The Centre, meanwhile, informed a bench comprising Chief Justice Surya Kant and justices Joymalya Bagchi and Vipul M Pancholi that it had constituted an expert committee comprising two former apex court judges and an ex-attorney general to review the NCERT book with a chapter on corruption in the judiciary.

Solicitor General Tushar Mehta told the bench that the committee comprises senior advocate and former Attorney General KK Venugopal, former top court judge Justice Indu Malhotra, and former Supreme Court judge and current National Judicial Academy director Justice Aniruddha Bose, along with a vice chancellor.

"We have formed the committee to draft the chapter. Mr KK Venugopal will be a member of the committee. Justice Indu Malhotra will also be a part. We have also requested Justice Aniruddha Bose from the National Judicial Academy to be there," Mehta said.

The top court was hearing a petition by former NCERT member Pankaj Pushkar against a passage in an older class 8 textbook that read, "recent judgments tend to view the slum dweller as an encroacher in the city."

The court refused to entertain the petition, observing that the judiciary should not be oversensitive about healthy criticism.

"It's a viewpoint about a judgment. That's a healthy criticism. Why the judiciary should be so oversensitive about that. This part of the book points out what is the structure of the judiciary, how they work, what they have done, some good has also been highlighted.

"Then they say, however, there are also court judgments that people believe work against the best interests of common persons. This is a viewpoint about a judgment, people have a right to criticise our judgments," the CJI observed orally.