The Chief Justice of India, Surya Kant, has now said that he never accepted the invitation from the NALSAR University of Law to be their Chief guest at their Convocation ceremony.
He said that since he never accepted, the question of attending the event does not arise.
The row began after a group of students protested the possibility of the CJI being at the event. The matter escalated when the Bar Council of India then ordered a boycott of the graduates. BCI Chairman Manan Kumar Mishra wrote a unilateral letter to the NALSAR Vice-Chancellor, asking him to identify and investigate the students who opposed the CJI's presence at the convocation, and warned that they could be barred from registering as lawyers. The order was instantly withdrawn after major backlash.
The Supreme Court also sought a response stating that the regulator should not have interfered in the matter between the CJI and NALSAR students.
On Monday, the CJI stated that he never actually agreed to NALSAR’s invitation after addressing the vice chancellors of the national Law Universities in Jodhpur.
The convocation is set to take place in late August or September.
More than 400 students out of the 1400 students at NALSAR opposed the CJI being the chief guest, citing his comments on hearing the petitions on the July 20 student march to the parliament. The CJI had refused to take suo motu cognisance of alleged police brutality against protesters, including the use of pellet guns and the use of facial recognition devices to identify students.
On July 22, a lawyer had claimed that he had video footage of the incident without filing a formal petition. The CJI asked him to file a formal petition explaining his allegations.
When the lawyer insisted that they view his video, the CJI asked him not to waste the court's time.
