Justice Gogoi all set to take over as next CJI on Oct. 3
Supreme Court’s seniormost judge Justice Ranjan Gogoi is set to become the next Chief Justice of India ( CJI). The present Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra, has recommended Justice Gogoi’s name for the top judicial post to the government which is likely to accept the suggestion.
Highly- placed sources told this newspaper that CJI Misra’s letter of recommendation would be delivered to the Union law ministry on Sunday. The recommendation is likely to be approved by the government and Justice Gogoi is expected to take oath on October 3. He is likely to have a tenure of a little over one year.
Earlier the law ministry had sent a communication to CJI Misra to recommend the name of his successor so that it could commence the process of appointment at least three weeks
before CJI Misra demits office next month. Normally, the recommendation is sent a month before the CJI demits office.
Justice Gogoi is currently heading the special bench that is monitoring the updation of National Register of Citizens in Assam to identify citizens and weed out illegally settled foreigners. He is also part of the bench monitoring the appointment of Lokpal and Lokayuktas in various states.
To curtail government expenditure on advertisements, Justice Gogoi, in one of his decision, had put curbs on glorifying the achievements of politicians and laid down new norms. On Thursday, he delivered a landmark verdict holding that a Scheduled Caste person from one State is not entitled to claim the benefit of quota in another state.
Justice Gogoi, who hails from Assam, was appointed a judge in the Gauhati high court on February 28, 2001. He later became the chief justice of the Punjab and Haryana high court on February 12, 2011. Justice Gogoi was elevated to the Supreme Court in April 2012. He is slated to serve in the top court till November 17, 2019.
There was speculation over Justice Gogoi’s appointment as the next CJI following an unprecedented press conference by four senior- most judges, including Justice Gogoi, in January this year when they had criticised Justice Misra over various issues, especially the manner of allocation of cases to certain benches. It was feared that Justice Gogoi might be superseded. Under the memorandum of procedure evolved under the collegium system of judges’ appoitment, it is customary and a convention for the outgoing CJI to name the senior most judge as his successor. There have been two attempts earlier to bypass the convention or “supersede” judges, after Independence.
The first “supersession” was in 1973 involving three judges. The then Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi, appointed Justice A. N. Ray as the CJI overlooking the three senior most judges of the Supreme Court, Justices J. M. Shelat, A. N, Grover and K. S. Hegde.
The second, possibly most infamous supersession, happened during the height of Emergency, when Mrs Gandhi disapproved the dissenting judgment of Justice H. R. Khanna related to Emergency’s imposition and Justice M. H. Beg was appointed as the CJI.