Bobde named new chief justice of India
NEW DELHI: Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde will take oath as the new chief justice of India on November 18,adayaterincumbentranjangogoidemitsoffice.
Justice Bobde, a Maharashtrian, will hold office for 18 months.
President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday issued a notification appointing Bobde as the next chief justice.
Gogoi had earlier recommended Bobde’s name, observing protocol. As per convention, the incumbent recommends the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court while giving out the recommendation.
Bobde, 63, comes from a family of eminent lawyers in Nagpur. His father, Arvind Shriniwas Bobde, was a two-time advocate general of the Maharashtra government. Bobde’s brother Vinod Bobde was a constitutional lawyer.
Born on April 24, 1956, Bobde had been Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. He studied law at the Nagpur University and enrolled as an advocate in 1978 at Maharashtra. He practised at the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court.
Bobde was designated as Senior Advocate in 1998 and was elevated to the Bench of the Bombay High Court on March 29, 2000, as an Additional Judge. He was sworn in as Chief Justice of Madhya Pradesh High Court on October 16, 2012 and was elevated as Supreme Court judge on April 12, 2013.
At the Supreme Court, Justice Bobde has heard several key cases such as the nine-judge Bench that declared the right to privacy as a fundamental right of an individual in 2017. He has been credited with the apex court judgement that the lack of
Aadhaar was not grounds to deprive any Indian citizen of basic services and government subsides.
In 2016, he suspended the sales of firecrackers in the national capital region of Delhi on grounds of extreme air pollution.
Bobdeisalsopartoftheayodhya-janmabhoomi case on which that apex court under the leadership of Justice Gogoi is expected to deliver the final verdict before November 17.
He also sits on the three-judge Bench along with Gogoi and Rohinton Fali Nariman that is hearing the National Registry of Citizenship case.
He was also part of the in-house panel handling one of the most controversial cases in the history of the Supreme Court — that of allegations of sexual harassment against Chief Justice Gogoi. Following several closed doors hearings the in-house panel headedbyjusticebobdegaveacleanchittogogoi, saying ‘no substance’ was found in the accusations levelled against the CJI by a former employee.