CJI: It is easy to criticise, attack, destroy a system

New Delhi: Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra said on Wednesday that to criticise, attack and destroy a system was easy but it was difficult and challenging to transform it into a performing one.

The Chief Justice, while delivering his speech after unfurling the national flag at the 72nd Independence Day celebrations organised by the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA), said one has to transcend his personal ambitions and take constructive steps with positive mindset so that the institution can go to greater heights.

“To criticise, attack and destroy the system is quite easy. What is difficult and challenging is to transform it into a performing one. For this, one has to transcend one’s personal ambitions or grievances and rather constructive steps need to be taken with positive mindset of reforms...With rationality, maturity, responsibility and composure,” Justice Misra said.

He said there may be some elements that may endeavour to weaken the institution but everyone together have refused to succumb to them.

“There may be some elements that may endeavour to weaken the institution. But we refuse, we all together, to succumb to them. I will tell them and quote Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses ‘but strong in will, to strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield’,” Justice Misra said.

Union law minister Ravi Shankar Prasad, who was also present at the event, said that it was necessary to have some kind of audit and understanding so that larger perspective of public interest litigations (PIL) is not lost. He was referring to the recent imposing of heavy cost by the apex court for filing frivolous PILs.