New Delhi: Two months after his reference to a section of youth as ‘cockroaches’ sparked a movement led the resignation of Union education minister of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led Union government, the Chief Justice of India Surya Kant has said that his observations were taken out of context.“Completely out of context. Completely. Let me share the background. The matter being discussed concerned lawyers who had entered the profession on the basis of fake or false law degrees. By fake degrees, I mean unrecognised degrees. Some people had never attended law colleges. Sitting at home, they somehow obtained degrees. I am told there are about 48,000 such lawyers in the country whose law degrees were never issued by the universities they claim,” CJI Kant told Bar and Bench’s Debayan Roy in an exclusive interview.CJI Kant said in the interview that his remarks were never about the youth and he had been been completely misquoted.“The discussion was about how these fake lawyers have become problematic in the legal system. It was in that context that I said they were virtually like cockroaches. My observation was made only in that context, about where they were coming from and how they had entered the system,” said the CJI.“The discussion was about how these fake lawyers have become problematic in the legal system…It was in that context that I said they were virtually like cockroaches,” he told Bar and Bench.In his interview with Bar and Bench, CJI Kant also strongly batted for a protocol for the recording, dissemination and reporting of court proceedings in the age of live-streaming.‘If somebody wants to file a case, I will never say no’CJI Kant said that while he had been asking the Supreme Court registry whether any petition had been filed regarding the students’ agitation or the youngsters’ agitation but he was consistently told that no petition had been filed in the Supreme Court.“Still, somebody came and made a mentioning as if a petition had already been filed and urgently required hearing. That is why I said, ‘Please don’t waste your time and my time.’ I cannot say in open court, ‘Go and file a petition,’ because I cannot invite litigation. But if somebody wants to file a case, I will never say no. The Supreme Court is definitely open for everyone. It was in that background that I made those remarks. He had not filed any petition. Except for a one-page letter addressed to the secretary general of the Court, nothing had been filed,” Kant told Bar and Bench.On July 22, CJI Kant had said that he was not interested in watching videos of police brutality on protesters on July 20, resulting in criticism from several quarters.Dipke thanks CJI For His Remarks after Dharmendra Pradhan’s resignationAfter the Union government gave in to the pressure of the youth leading to the resignation of education minister Dharmendra Pradhan on Saturday (July 25), Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) founder Abhijeet Dipke thanked CJI Kant for making the remark about cockroaches.“I would like to thank CJI Surya Kant. If he hadn’t called us cockroaches, I wouldn’t have come to India. This movement would not have started,” Dipke told supporters after Pradhan’s resignation.On May 15, CJI Kant had lashed out at “several bogus advocates in Delhi” and observed that he was considering ordering a Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) investigation into whether their law degrees were genuine or not.“There are already parasites of society who attack the system and you want to join hands with them? There are youngsters like cockroaches, who don’t get any employment and don’t have any place in profession. Some of them become media, some of them become social media, some of them become RTI activists, some of them become other activists, and they start attacking everyone…and you people file contempt petitions!” CJI Kant had said.His comments had resulted in massive outrage, also subsequently leading to Dipke creating CJP, which within a matter of days, garnered over 22 million supporters on Instagram, laying ground for the outfit’s protest at the Jantar Mantar lasting more than a month and ending on Saturday after the resignation of Union minister Pradhan.