DELHI: Supreme Court judge, Justice DY Chandrachud on Wednesday was sworn in as the 50th Chief Justice of India. The oath was administered by President Droupadi Murmu at the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
Justice DY Chandrachud as CJI will have a tenure of more than two years and will demit office on November 10, 2024.
Appointed as SC judge in 2016, Justice DY Chandrachud overturned the verdicts of his father in 2017 and 2018. In the famous Aadhaar verdict, the judge had starked a discordant node by dissenting with the majority and ruling that Aadhaar was unconstitutionally passed as a money bill and violative of fundamental rights. He had also dissented in a case related to the arrest of five human rights activists who had allegedly incited violence at Bhima Koregaon when the other two judges of the bench had allowed Pune police to continue their investigation as per law.
Justice Chandrachud has been a part of many constitution benches that have delivered path-breaking verdicts such as the decriminalisation of same-sex consensual sex by striking down section 377 of IPC which criminalises consensual unnatural sex between consenting adults and recognising “living will' made by terminally-ill patients for passive euthanasia which have played a major role in strengthening the human rights jurisprudence in the country. He was was also part of the five-judge bench that delivered the famous Ayodhya verdict and that allowed the entry of women into Sabarimala temple.
The judge has also authored judgements that have batted for empowering women and breaking the shackles of patriarchy. In a ruling penned by him, the judge gave a massive boost to the reproductive rights of women by ruling that prohibiting unmarried or single pregnant women with pregnancies upto 24 weeks from accessing abortion while allowing married women to access them during the same period fell foul of the spirit of right to equality. In his most recent judgment, Justice Chandrachud remarked that two finger test re-victimizes & re-traumatizes women who may have been sexually assaulted and asked the centre to ensure that the practice is stopped.