JUSTICE BOBDE RECOMMENDED AS SUCCESSOR BY CJI GOGOI

NEWDELHI: Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde is expected to take over as the 47th chief justice of India (CJI) after incumbent Ranjan Gogoi recommended the second most senior Supreme Court judge as his successor to the Centre on Friday, people familiar with the development said.

Justice Bobde, 63, could be sworn in on November 18, a day after Gogoi retires, added the people, who asked not to be named. Gogoi has stuck to convention by recommending Bobde’s name to the law ministry for a presidential order to appoint him as CJI.

Reacting to the development, Justice Bobde said his focus would be on “dispensing justice”.

As in previous years, the recommendation has been sent a month before the current CJI demits office. Justice Bobde, as CJI, will have a tenure of a little over 18 months and he is scheduled to retire in April 2021.

Justice Bobde was elevated to the Supreme Court in April 2012 after serving as chief justice of the Madhya Pradesh high court.

Justice Bobde is a third-gener

ation lawyer who studied law at Nagpur University. He started out practising law at the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court. He was elevated to the high court as an additional judge in March 2000.

In his verdicts in the Supreme Court, justice Bobde has backed privacy as a fundamental right and held that the “right to privacy is inextricably bound up with all exercises of human liberty”.

He is also a part of the fivejudge bench that heard the Ayodhya land dispute case.

He was also a member of the bench that ruled that no Indian citizen could be deprived of basic services and government subsidies for not having an Aadhaar card.

In 2017, he upheld the Karnataka government’s ban on a book on the grounds that it outraged the religious feelings of Lord Basavanna’s followers. Justice Bobde also led the three-judge bench that suspended the sale of firecrackers in the National Capital Region in 2016.

“There will be a lot of expectations from justice Bobde as he has a relatively longer term as a Chief Justice of India. Besides dealing with the problem of pendency of case, he will be faced with the task of making appointments to the high courts, which are reeling under almost 50% vacancies,” said Supreme Court advocate Gyanant Singh.