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New Delhi: Justice Surya Kant will take oath as the 53rd Chief Justice of India on Monday. He will have a 14-month tenure. The oath will be administered by President Droupadi Murmu. Justice Kant succeeds incumbent CJI BR Gavai.
Earlier on the recommendation of CJI Gavai, President Murmu appointed Justice Surya Kant as the next Chief Justice of India. The appointment was done "in exercise of the powers conferred by clause (2) of Article 124 of the Constitution" on the President.
Justice Gavai demitted office on Sunday, after turning 65. He recommended the name of Justice Surya Kant, who is the senior most judge in the Supreme Court as his successor, thus upholding the precedent set down in the Constitution.
He has been part of important benches in the Supreme Couret, and has given rulings on cases related to Article 370, the revision of Bihar’s electoral rolls and the Pegasus spyware case.
Justice Surya Kant was born in Haryana on February 10,1962. He began his legal career in Hisar in 1984 and then moved to the Punjab and Haryana High Court in Chandigarh.
He has handled a number of litigations, representing several universities, boards, corporations, banks and even the High Court itself in several cases. In July 2000, he was also appointed as the youngest Advocate General of the state of Haryana. He took over as a permanent judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court on January 9,2004.
Before his elevation to the Supreme Court in 2019, he was serving as the Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court. This was a short stint from October 2018 to May 24, 2019, when he joined the apex court as a judge. Since the last one year, Justice Kant has been the Chairman of the Supreme Court Legal Services Committee.
Talking about his vision for the court, Justice Kant said that his focus, during the tenure as CJI would be to reduce the pendency of cases in the Supreme Court and also other courts in the country. He said that he would also want to know what problems the lower courts are facing across the country, which is impacting the speed with which they dispose of cases. For this he said, he would interact with the High Court of the states, where cases are pending.
He further declared that Constitution benches of 5,7 and 9 judges would be set up in the Supreme Court to hear important constitutional matters, pending for a long time. He said that the courts would "encourage community mediation" in order to reduce dependency and burden on courts. This tactic would also be applied in case of disputes between the Centre and the states, he added.
