ITEM NO.22 COURT NO.1 SECTION PIL-W
S U P R E M E C O U R T O F I N D I A
RECORD OF PROCE EDINGS. Writ Petition(s)(Civil) No(s).1246/2026
RAKESH KUMAR SINGH ALIAS RAKESH SINGH Petitioner(s) VERSUS
UNION OF INDIA & ORS. Respondent(s)
Date : 05-10-2026
These petitions were called on for hearing today.
CORAM :
HON'BLE THE CHIEF JUSTICE HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE JOYMALYA BAGCHI
HON'BLE MRS. JUSTICE V. MOHANA
For Petitioner(s) :
Mr. Vikas Singh, Sr. Adv. Ms. Deepeika Kalia, Adv. Mr. Sudeep Chandra, Adv. Ms. Priyanka Dwivedi, Adv. Ms. Khushi, Adv.
Mr. Neeraj Kumar Vats, Adv. Mr. Avinash Jha, Adv.
Mr. Mudit Gupta- 3309, AOR
For Respondent(s) :
Mr. Tushar Mehta, SG
Mr. G.S. Makker, AOR
UPON
hearing the counsel the Court made the following
O R D E R
1. Issue notice, returnable on. 27.10.2026.
2. The respondent no.2 – Election Commission of India may be served through the standing counsel as well.
The other respondents may be served through dasti notice.
(ARJUN BISHT) (PREETHI DILEEP KUMAR) ASTT. REGISTRAR-cum-PS
S U P R E M E C O U R T O F I N D I A
RECORD OF PROCE EDINGS. Writ Petition(s)(Civil) No(s).1246/2026
RAKESH KUMAR SINGH ALIAS RAKESH SINGH Petitioner(s) VERSUS
UNION OF INDIA & ORS. Respondent(s)
Date : 05-10-2026
These petitions were called on for hearing today.
CORAM :
HON'BLE THE CHIEF JUSTICE HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE JOYMALYA BAGCHI
HON'BLE MRS. JUSTICE V. MOHANA
For Petitioner(s) :
Mr. Vikas Singh, Sr. Adv. Ms. Deepeika Kalia, Adv. Mr. Sudeep Chandra, Adv. Ms. Priyanka Dwivedi, Adv. Ms. Khushi, Adv.
Mr. Neeraj Kumar Vats, Adv. Mr. Avinash Jha, Adv.
Mr. Mudit Gupta- 3309, AOR
For Respondent(s) :
Mr. Tushar Mehta, SG
Mr. G.S. Makker, AOR
UPON
hearing the counsel the Court made the following
O R D E R
1. Issue notice, returnable on. 27.10.2026.
2. The respondent no.2 – Election Commission of India may be served through the standing counsel as well.
The other respondents may be served through dasti notice.
(ARJUN BISHT) (PREETHI DILEEP KUMAR) ASTT. REGISTRAR-cum-PS
5 comments:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50SaaFEFeEE
Sons of judges are judges, judiciary makes no apologies for being dynastic: Indira Jaising | Adda Oct 2, 2026 The reason for Indian democracy’s downslide is the collapse of judiciary
Few people know more about India’s courts than Indira Jaising. In a career spanning more than half a century, Jaising has practised both at the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court.
On this episode of ‘Scroll Adda’, she speaks to Shoaib Daniyal on the ills plaguing the judiciary. Dynasty has taken over the courts, she says, leading to a lack of intellectual development. Bright young lawyers without family contacts are forced to leave litigation.
The judiciary is not doing its job of being a check on the executive. Jaising argues that this government is simply ignoring the Constitution and the courts are unable to stop it. ‘The reason for Indian democracy’s downslide is the collapse of the judiciary,’ she says. Meanwhile, public movements like the Jantar Mantar protests, sparked by the Chief Justice’s ‘cockroach’ comment, show that anger against the judiciary is boiling over into the streets. Chapters 00:00 Precap
02:12 ‘Sons of judges are judges’
13:10 The cosy relationship between collegium and government
21:09 Government is ignoring the Constitution
25:29 Basic structure is dead
31:30 The Ram Mandir judgement
35:50 Corruption and the judiciary
39:30 The fear of contempt of court
45:36 Judges and cockroaches Transcript Chapter 1: Precap
0:000 secondsOur [music] courts have become places where you can recite mantras. Our judges are being
0:099 secondstold that you decide your cases according to what your a thousand-year civilization tells you to do. [music]
0:1616 secondsAnd then you see judges talking about dharma and cautilia and the Bhagat Gita and the Vedas and Manuspriti.
0:2424 secondsWhat's going on here?
0:2525 secondsThe guardian of the constitution is a judiciary. But you're saying rather than guarding the constitution, it's actually [music] helping this process. What went wrong?
0:3333 secondsThis is a country which is functioning as if there was no constitution of India at all. The government simply ignores the constitution of India. One of the
0:4242 secondsreasons for the downslide of Indian democracy is the collapse of the judiciary. in the corridors of the
0:5050 secondsSupreme Court, you hear people say that, "Oh, you know, uh, you can get an order from this judge by giving this amount of
0:5858 secondsmoney." The judiciary makes no apologies for being dynastic. Sons of judges are
1:051 minute, 5 secondsjudges and grandsons [music] of judges are judges. It's called the uncle judge phenomenon. The colligium and the
government [music] have a very cozy relationship with each other. And if there is a conflict, it is the collision that [music] succumbs.
1:241 minute, 24 secondsIt's the perfect crime, right?
1:251 minute, 25 secondsYes, it is the perfect crime. I called it the Surajmuki court. You're willing to turn your face whichever way the sun
1:321 minute, 32 secondsrises. Okay. To whom does the judiciary belong? And it belongs to insiders. It belongs to judges. It belongs to famous
1:411 minute, 41 secondssenior lawyers. It doesn't belong to the litigant.
1:451 minute, 45 seconds[music]
1:541 minute, 54 secondsIndra J Singh is one of India's most well-known lawyers known for her work in gender, labor and constitutional rights.
2:022 minutes, 2 secondsShe has a new biography out and we'll be discussing it as well as her five decades journey in the law. Indra welcome to school now.
2:102 minutes, 10 secondsThank you. You have a very evocative line in the book where you say the constitution is your home. Unpack it.
Chapter 2: ‘Sons of judges are judges’
2:182 minutes, 18 secondsUnpack that for us.
2:202 minutes, 20 secondsYeah. See it's about how do you acquire a sense of belonging
2:272 minutes, 27 secondsand I always I had a lot of difficulty with that because uh being a Cindi I
2:342 minutes, 34 secondscome there is no territorial entity where I can say this is my
2:432 minutes, 43 secondsstate of origin. uh India is a country which is defined by linguistic states
2:502 minutes, 50 secondsand uh suddenly you find yourself uh in a place which uh which doesn't have a
2:572 minutes, 57 secondslinguistic state called synind and the question arises in your mind where do I really belong
3:063 minutes, 6 secondsand and you do feel a sense of belonging it's not as if because there is no sin I don't belong to India I don't feel the
3:133 minutes, 13 secondsbelonging to India I feel it. So that is what led me to kind of reflect on what
3:213 minutes, 21 secondsis it that gives me this sense of belonging. And uh [clears throat] after
3:263 minutes, 26 secondsvery long time I've felt that my sense of belonging to India comes from the
3:343 minutes, 34 secondsvalues of the constitution and this is why I call it my home. So when you read the preamble and you read
3:433 minutes, 43 secondsthings like liberty, equality, fraternity, dignity, then I begin to feel a sense of
3:513 minutes, 51 secondsbelonging and this is the reason why I called it my home because home is where you belong.
3:563 minutes, 56 secondsSo it's a sort of civic naturalism almost literally. It could be uh I don't know how to describe it but I can only
4:044 minutes, 4 secondstell you that I had in the legal profession I had no networks to call my
own. Uh you must understand that in the legal profession it's just about your uh
4:194 minutes, 19 secondsdynastic hereditary networks.
4:234 minutes, 23 secondsSo especially in the Supreme Court of India or for that matter in any state you belong to a state or you belong to a
4:334 minutes, 33 secondsdynasty or you belong to a network uh which then becomes your goto network for your professional advancement.
4:444 minutes, 44 seconds[snorts]
4:444 minutes, 44 secondsSo you uh you you you grow in the profession uh by communicating with that network.
4:544 minutes, 54 secondsNow I had no such network. I was a first generation lawyer. So I didn't have a
5:005 minutesnetwork of lawyers to go to. Uh I had no linguistic identity with the state of
5:075 minutes, 7 secondsMaharashtra where I began my practice in uh in the Bombay High Court. dominated by Gujaratis and Paris.
5:185 minutes, 18 secondsSo it was a search which eventually ended up in the Supreme Court of India
5:255 minutes, 25 secondswhere again you see a microcosm of the country as a whole and then you realize okay this is what I've been looking for.
5:335 minutes, 33 secondsIt is the constitution of India that I've been looking for. So you always felt you were an outsider to to the jud judiciary both ethnol linguistically but
5:415 minutes, 41 secondsmaybe also because of gender because gender particularly uh and this is where
5:475 minutes, 47 secondsI have always paid homage to Dr. a metar because of article 15 of the
5:555 minutes, 55 secondsconstitution of India which says there shall be no discrimination based on cast, religion, race or gender and
6:036 minutes, 3 seconds[clears throat] I think women owe their uh entry into the public domain to to that provision in the constitution of
6:116 minutes, 11 secondsIndia. So although you may face discrimination de facto but it's very
6:196 minutes, 19 secondsimportant that at the normative level that kind of discrimination is outlawed and well I mean a country like United
6:296 minutes, 29 secondsStates of America doesn't have a right to equality guaranteed in its constitution. So this is very empowering and particularly for women.
6:396 minutes, 39 secondsI [snorts] want you to dig a little bit more into this Indra because I think people outside the the lawyer space don't really
6:476 minutes, 47 secondsunderstand this. People from outside look at the law as something objective, as something fair, but you're actually saying that when you actually get into
6:556 minutes, 55 secondsit, there are cast networks, there are kinship networks, there are ethnic networks. And I hear this from lawyers all the time. I mean lawyers come like
7:037 minutes, 3 secondslawyers you know qu about the fact that nepotism is such a big thing when you're practicing in in the in in the courts
7:117 minutes, 11 secondsright people have told me that you really can't get anywhere unless you have an aunt or an uncle or a father as a judge or a senior lawyer
unpack this for us what you have heard is the truth and uh it's in your face
7:307 minutes, 30 seconds[snorts]
7:317 minutes, 31 secondsThe judiciary makes no apologies for being dynastic.
7:377 minutes, 37 secondsAnd uh it sons of judges are judges and grandsons of judges are judges mainly male of
7:467 minutes, 46 secondscourse and um leave aside being judges. But now of course you have this phenomenon where
7:567 minutes, 56 secondsuh a judge's son uh will at a very young age become what they call an additional
8:038 minutes, 3 secondsadvocate general of a state a [snorts] state with it which he may have had no connection whatsoever and
8:118 minutes, 11 secondsmaybe too young to be in that position but his sole qualification is he is a
8:188 minutes, 18 secondsjudge's son and so he has that platform [snorts] which gives visibility, it
8:278 minutes, 27 secondsgives uh power, [clears throat] it gives money.
8:328 minutes, 32 secondsSo this is this is the norm in the legal profession till today.
8:388 minutes, 38 secondsAnd explain it to us. So say I'm a client. Why would I go to a Nepo kid lawyer versus a lawyer without network?
8:468 minutes, 46 secondsVery good question. You would seek out a Nepo kid to go to because your mind will
8:538 minutes, 53 secondstell you that a Nepo kid would get a better reception in a court of law than a complete outsider would.
9:049 minutes, 4 secondsAnd so you know, oh this judge is very conscious of the fact that the lawyer appearing before me is my brother judge's son, right?
9:139 minutes, 13 secondsAnd this he calls me uncle or something like that. like maybe this is called the uncle judge phenomenon. Okay,
9:209 minutes, 20 secondsthere's something really wrong with that because the uh norm should be ought to
9:279 minutes, 27 secondsbe that if you have a father forget mothers
9:349 minutes, 34 secondsuh in as a judge of the Supreme Court of India, you should not appear before any of the judges in that court. Whereas
9:439 minutes, 43 secondsthey very conveniently say oh the law which says you can't appear before your own relative means only that one particular judge which is an utter
9:529 minutes, 52 secondsnonsense. A court means a full court but but the court the Supreme Court of India will not decide that case. There
10:0110 minutes, 1 secondwas a case many years ago uh which raised this question uh but they just put it on. Tell us more what is the case about?
10:0810 minutes, 8 secondsWell, I think it was a case about the a wife of a sitting judge who was appearing before other judges in Karnataka.
10:1610 minutes, 16 secondsUh not her own husband obviously, but other judges. And an objection was taken to this that this is not on because the
So AIIEA/ AIIPA representing so called 85% In-service/Retirees of LIC decided not to take legal arena to restore TU rights snatched under LIC Act 1981 for 45 years as well as decades delayed entry at DHC and now at SC without spending even a Rupee but having collected enormous crores as legal fund. Karma punished all for not questening their mentors upto this day but splitting hairs on legal terms in vain for decades.What a pity!!!
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