Will collegium impasse cost India chance to get woman CJI in 2027?

IF ELEVATED TIMELY, JUSTICE BV NAGARATHNA, APPOINTED A JUDGE OF THE K’TAKA HC IN FEB 2008, COULD SUCCEED JUSTICE SURYA KANT AS CJI IN FEB 2027

NEW DELHI: A stalemate in the Supreme Court collegium over one name may cost the country the opportunity to have its first woman Chief Justice of India (CJI) in 2027.

The five senior-most judges in the top court, who make up its collegium, have failed to arrive at a consensus on elevating justice Akil A Kureshi, currently chief justice of the Tripura high court, as a judge in the apex court, people familiar with the development said on condition of anonymity.

The collegium, which is headed by CJI SA Bobde, has met at least three times in last one month to decide on names of judges for elevation to the apex court, but each time, according to these people, it has been unable to decide on any name simply because of the lack of consensus on justice Kureshi, the second senior most judge across all of India’s high courts.

And that has cast a long shadow over the timely elevation of justice BV Nagarathna from the Karnataka high court, who, if elevated now, could become India’s first woman CJI in 2027.

The other judges in the collegium are justices NV Ramana, Rohinton F Nariman, Uday U Lalit and AM Khanwilkar. The people familiar with the matter added that one of the members of the collegium has insisted that justice Kureshi’s name be sent along with the names of others whose elevation is being recommended. With the collegium, which recommends names to the law ministry, not arriving at a consensus on his name, its other recommendations have been held up too.

The law ministry has the option of sending the recommendations back to the collegium for review, but if the collegium resubmits them, it has to approve the names -- although there is no time frame mandated for this approval, which means it can delay the process indefinitely if it so desires.

The top court currently has a vacancy of four judges out of the sanctioned strength of 34 judges. Five more judges will retire by the end of this year, including one out of the only two woman judges.

Justice Kureshi’s current posting, in Tripura, also raised eyebrows when it was made. He was appointed as a judge in the Gujarat high court in 2004, and he is scheduled to retire in March 2022, at the age of 62. Supreme Court judges retire at 65, and judges get an automatic extension of three years once elevated to the apex court.

As a judge in the Gujarat high court, justice Kureshi heard several important and politically sensitive cases, including the one concerning the killing of extortionist and gangster Sohrabuddin Sheikh in an encounter.

In May 2019, the SC collegium recommended justice Kureshi ‘s appointment as the chief justice of the Madhya Pradesh high court, but the central government expressed its reservations. This prompted the collegium to modify its recommendation in September 2019 and transfer justice Kureshi to a different high court -- as chief justice of the Tripura high court, relatively a much smaller high court than Madhya Pradesh’s. The prolonged disagreement within the collegium has not only created uncertainty over elevation of justice Kureshi and other senior high court judges, but it has also led to a state of suspense whether India could get its first woman CJI, justice Nagarathna.

If elevated without much delay, justice Nagarathna, who was appointed a judge of the Karnataka high court in February 2008, could succeed justice Surya Kant as CJI in February 2027, and occupy the post until 29 October, 2027. She will otherwise retire as a high court judge in October 2024. Justice Nagarathna’s father, Justice ES Venkataramiah, was CJI for a few months in 1989.

HT has learnt that if the current impasse continues and the possible elevation of justice Nagarathna is delayed further, her chances of becoming the first woman CJI may get diminished further.

Apart from her, the elevation of Punjab and Haryana high court chief justice Ravi Shanker Jha, whose parent high court is Madhya Pradesh, is also stuck owing to the dissonance over justice Kureshi’s elevation. Other names in the zone of consideration for their elevation to the SC include Calcutta high court chief justice TB Radhakrishnan, Gujarat high court chief justice Vikram Nath and Delhi high court chief justice DN Patel.

KANPUR : A woman was pulled out of the ground, hours after she buried herself ‘on the instructions of the divine’, in the presence of hundreds of villagers, and hospitalised in Kanpur, on Wednesday.

A heavy police contingent has been deployed around her house. Arun Kumar, sub-divisional magistrate, Ghatampur, said the woman had taken the ‘samadhi’ for 48 hours, dictated by superstition.

“She has been taken and hospitalised; her family claimed that Lord Shiva appeared in her dream and had asked her to do so,” he said. “Despite some resistance, we managed to take her out from the grave that had been filled to the top with mud,” he said.

Gayashri, 55, a deeply religious woman, had been praying for the last five years, in Medh village of Sajeti in Kanpur’s Ghatampur tehsil. Her husband Ram Babu and daughter Sumitra Devi said she has divine blessing and gets ‘darshan’ of the Lord intermittently.

For two days, she was having limited water and food and she was engrossed in prayers alone. This morning, she announced to take samadhi and the hundreds of villagers who thronged the site helped in digging the grave. The villagers performed religious rituals before she stepped into the grave and it was filled amid instructions to look for her after 48 hours. The Ghatampur police said Gayashri was being treated at the government hospital by a team of doctors.

YANGON: Large crowds demonstrating against the military coup in Myanmar again defied a ban on protests on Wednesday, even after security forces used force and raided the headquarters of the political party of ousted leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

Witnesses estimated that tens of thousands of protesters, if not more, turned out in Yangon and Mandalay, the country’s biggest cities. Anti-military rallies also took place in the capital Naypyitaw and elsewhere.

The protesters are demanding that power be restored to Suu Kyi’s deposed civilian government. They’re also seeking freedom for her and other governing party members since the military detained them on February 1. Some demonstrators in Yangon gathered at foreign embassies to seek international pressure against the coup.

Outside China’s embassy in Yangon, the pro-democracy protesters appealed directly to Chinese President Xi Jinping to withdraw his government’s support for military. They pleaded with Xi to help reverse the coup, while others held signs reading “we are watching you” and “we know what you’re up to,” photographs taken by local media outlets showed. Protesters also gathered in front of embassies of the US, Japan, Korea and India as well as the United Nations offices in an attempt to build international support for the return of a civilian government.

A small group outside the Japanese embassy held signs and chanted “We want democracy, we get dictators!” They sat in several children’s wading pools, three or fewer per pool, in what appeared to be a tongue-incheek way of showing compliance with an emergency law that bans gatherings of more than five people. Another group hauled a fake coffin as part of a mock funeral for Min Aung Hlaing, the military chief who is the country’s new leader.