Delhi Confidential: Behind CJI Chandrachud’s code switching in Ranchi

Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud usually delivers his speeches in English. But on Wednesday, he chose to address the gathering at the inauguration of the new High Court campus in Ranchi in Hindi. The CJI is learnt to have decided upon Hindi since he felt that the audience would be more comfortable with the language. While High Court judges and former judges were present, they were a small segment — the rest of the audience comprised members of the district judiciary and lawyers from across the state, and the CJI could have had a better connect with the audience by speaking in Hindi. The speech was also a way to send a message across — that the country’s judiciary is not an English-speaking one but is deeply connected with the people. As the CJI sat down after the speech, President Droupadi Murmu complimented him for speaking in Hindi and lauded him for it during her address, too.

Testing Time

After last year’s fiasco, the Central University Entrance Test (CUET) has mostly had a smooth run since it started on May 21. Last year, the exam’s debut was marred by technical problems, resulting in delays and even cancellations on several days. At the time, the grapevine at Shashtri Bhawan attributed the poor performance to the National Testing Agency’s (NTA) decision to hire a new firm for conducting the exam. In the past, the agency had always partnered with a well-known IT services giant to conduct all its computer-based entrance tests. However, the NTA ended its long association with this IT giant after several instances of cheating and fraud were reported in the conduct of JEE Main last year. But the agency’s experiment with a new technical partner didn’t go too well either, as shown by the CUET fiasco. Concerned about the potential consequences of another failure, the NTA decided to play it safe this year and rehired the IT services giant to conduct CUET.