Key Points:
Over 450 NALSAR graduating students have signed a joint letter asking the university not to invite CJI Surya Kant as chief guest for their 2026 convocation.
Students cite a July 23 hearing where the CJI allegedly refused to view video evidence of police excesses during the 'Chalo Sansad' protest and limited the petitioner's counsel.
Rather than demanding the invite be withdrawn, students carefully asked the university to "strongly reconsider" and consult them first, framing it as a values-based concern, not defiance.
FOR MOST LAW STUDENTS, a convocation is the moment years of coursework, moot courts and late-night case readings finally add up to something tangible: a degree, a handshake, a photograph to send home. At NALSAR University of Law in Hyderabad, that moment has instead become the centre of an uncomfortable standoff. More than 450 students from the graduating batch of 2026 have signed a joint representation asking the university not to invite Chief Justice of India Surya Kant as chief guest for their convocation, a request rooted not in ceremony, but in how they watched a recent case unfold in his courtroom.
The trigger, according to the students' letter, was a Supreme Court hearing on July 23 tied to the 'Chalo Sansad' march, a protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar on July 20 over the conduct of the NEET examination and calls for reform at the National Test Agency. Students allege that during the hearing, the CJI declined to view video evidence of alleged police excesses against the protesters, telling the courtroom he wasn't interested in watching videos and didn't have time for it. The representation also claims that the petitioner's counsel was not given a full opportunity to present their arguments.
The students' letter goes further, pointing to a separate petition seeking an inquiry into the same police action, which alleges that more than 70 protesters, including women and children, were injured during the march. They also raised objection to remarks attributed to the Chief Justice comparing Indian youth to cockroaches, a comment that appears to have stayed with the graduating batch as much as anything said in court.
What stands out in the students' communication, sent to the Vice-Chancellor, Registrar and faculty on July 23, is how deliberately it avoids sounding combative. "Our concern is narrow and more specific to us as a graduating batch," the letter states, arguing that a convocation ought to reflect NALSAR's own stated commitment to constitutional rights, access to justice, and reasoned engagement with grievances, values the students say they were taught to hold, not just recite. Rather than demanding the invitation be withdrawn outright, they've asked the administration to "strongly reconsider" the choice and to consult the graduating batch before any final decision is made or invitation extended.
There's something quietly personal in that question. These are students who, in a few months, will stand on a stage and receive degrees meant to certify them as custodians of the law, degrees that, for many, will be handed over by whoever occupies the chief guest's chair that day. For 450 of them to say that the person filling that chair matters to how they'll remember the moment isn't a small thing. It reflects a generation of law graduates unwilling to treat the symbolism of their own graduation as separate from the legal principles they spent years studying. Their letter is explicit that this isn't about picking a side in the underlying protest dispute, but about whether an institution built around ideas like due process and fair hearing should extend its highest honour to a moment they feel embodies the opposite.
NALSAR's administration has not yet issued a public response to the representation, and it remains unclear whether the invitation to CJI Surya Kant will be reconsidered, confirmed, or quietly reworked before the 2026 convocation takes place. But regardless of how the university responds, the letter itself says something worth sitting with: for this batch of graduating lawyers, the line between classroom and courtroom didn't disappear once exams ended, it followed them all the way to the stage they're about to walk across.
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