“His Next Mentioning In Court No. 1 Would’ve Been Rejected”: CJI Surya Kant Joins The Humour At Tushar Mehta Book Launch

Chief Justice of India Justice Surya Kant on Sunday appeared to fully embrace the wit, satire and courtroom humour that define Solicitor General Tushar Mehta’s newly launched books, delivering a speech that itself became one of the evening’s most entertaining highlights.

Launching The Bench, The Bar and The Bizarre and The Lawful and The Awful before an audience packed with judges, senior advocates and constitutional functionaries, the CJI repeatedly leaned into the playful spirit of the books, even joking that Mehta may have consciously avoided writing about Indian judges out of professional survival instinct.

“Tushar bhai knows that if he wrote about our quirks, his next mentioning in Court No. 1 would have been outrightly rejected and that too without any review petition,” Justice Surya Kant remarked, drawing loud laughter across the packed auditorium.

The remark came as part of a running theme throughout the evening that Mehta’s books had opened a rare window into the deeply human, eccentric and occasionally absurd world surrounding legal institutions.

Far from maintaining the stiff formality usually associated with judicial speeches, the Chief Justice appeared to deliberately mirror the tone of the books themselves: conversational, witty and sharply observant. Several in attendance later joked that “the CJI got the memo.”

At another point, Justice Surya Kant humorously attempted to “solve the mystery” of how the Solicitor General managed to write two books despite one of the country’s most demanding legal schedules.

“As the Solicitor General of India, I see him spend his mornings in Court No. 1, afternoons across courtrooms and government work, and evenings hopefully reading thousands of pages of briefs,” he said.

“And yet we are here to launch not one but two books. Either Tushar bhai successfully petitioned the Almighty for a 25th hour in the day and kept that order strictly for himself…”

The Chief Justice then delivered another punchline that quickly became one of the evening’s most quoted moments.

“Or probably he discovered that the best time for comedic writing is while sitting in Court No. 1 when the Bench keeps reading briefs and he gets enough time to pen down memories.”

The speech repeatedly blurred the line between institutional seriousness and self-aware humour, precisely the territory Mehta’s books attempt to explore.

“Reading these two books back-to-back is like binging a courtroom drama that accidentally wandered into a stand-up special,” Justice Surya Kant observed.

Yet beneath the humour, the Chief Justice made a serious point about the legal profession itself. Law, despite its intimidating exterior, remains a profoundly human enterprise shaped by personalities, flaws, instincts and occasional absurdities.

“These are revelations about how the humanity of the legal process occasionally peeks through its marble façade,” he said while discussing the books.

Justice Surya Kant also praised the books for tackling themes such as artificial intelligence hallucinations in legal research, judicial eccentricities, social media distortions and courtroom culture without slipping into cynicism or disrespect.

“Humour here is not mockery but education,” he remarked.

The event eventually evolved into something more than a conventional book launch. Between Amit Shah’s remarks on institutional balance, Mehta’s own self-deprecating observations and the CJI’s unexpectedly playful speech, the evening became an unusually candid glimpse into the lighter, more informal side of India’s legal establishment.

The event was attended by Union Home Minister Amit Shah, Attorney General R. Venkataramani, senior judges, law officers and members of the legal fraternity.