July 17, 2026

Fake Degrees And Fraudulent Credentials Cause Real Damage

By Sunil Garodia
First publised on 2026-05-28 11:03:33

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Editor-in-Chief of indiacommentary.com. Current Affairs analyst and political commentator. Author of Cyber Scams in India, Digital Arrest, The Money Trap and The Human Hack

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This is the second of the five-article series on this subject. 

Whatever one thinks of the language Chief Justice Surya Kant chose, the underlying problem he pointed toward is real and corrosive. India has, for decades, struggled with a plague of fraudulent credentials. Fake degree mills operate openly in several states. Bar council enrolments have been tainted by bogus law certificates. Medical councils have detected practitioners with fabricated MBBS degrees treating patients. Journalists have been found carrying press cards from non-existent publications. The problem is not imaginary.

The entry of fraudulent actors into professions that depend on public trust causes damage that is neither abstract nor trivial. A lawyer who obtained admission through a forged degree does not merely cheat the system - he cheats every client who relies on his counsel, every opposing party who deserves competent adversarial representation, and every genuine law graduate who earned her place honestly. The same logic applies across medicine, journalism, the civil services, and the judiciary itself.

RTI activism, which the CJI appeared to include in his sweep of criticism, is an interesting case. The Right to Information Act is a genuine democratic instrument, and most of its practitioners serve the public interest by extracting information that governments prefer to bury. But there is a subset that weaponises RTI filings as instruments of extortion - flooding offices with queries not to seek information but to extract cash payments for withdrawal. These actors pollute the mechanism for everyone who uses it legitimately.

The distinction, however, between those who abuse institutions and those who criticise them is one that courts must be especially careful to maintain. Criticism of institutions - including the Supreme Court - is not abuse. Asking uncomfortable questions of public officials is not parasitism. Reporting facts that powerful people would rather suppress is not cockroach behaviour. A judge who cannot distinguish between a fraudster with a fake degree and a journalist asking a difficult question has a problem far more serious than imprecise language.

The solution to the genuine problem of fraudulent credentials lies in stricter verification, independent bar council audits, and stronger prosecution of degree mills - not in rhetorical sweeps that conflate the fraudster with the critic. Precision in diagnosis is as important in institutional reform as it is in medicine. The CJI was pointing at a real disease. He named the wrong patient.