Overview
- Justice Ujjal Bhuyan warned of a surge in FIRs for protests, student agitations and even memes, saying such trivial cases escalate to the Supreme Court and drain judicial time through Special Investigation Teams.
- He said many judges are "more loyal than the king," showing undue deference to investigating agencies and denying bail in deserving cases despite the principle that bail is the norm.
- Quoting Ministry of Home Affairs figures, he noted thousands of UAPA arrests with conviction rates hovering around 1–6% from 2019 to 2023, and under PMLA 7,771 ECIRs with 1,031 arrests and only 47 trials concluded as of March 31, 2025.
- He urged the judiciary to act as a constitutional sentinel rather than align with political slogans, proposing 2050 as a reflective institutional milestone as the Constitution and Supreme Court approach their centenaries.
- He highlighted persistent gender imbalance in higher courts, contrasting women’s strong performance in objective lower-judiciary exams with only about 14% women in high courts and just 11 women appointed to the Supreme Court since 1950, which he linked to subjective collegium assessments.