CJI Lalit recommends Justice Chandrachud's name as his successor

Justice Chandrachud would become the 50th CJI on November 9, a day after the incumbent CJI would demit office.
Chief Justice of India UU Lalit with  Justice DY Chandrachud (Photo | Express)
Chief Justice of India UU Lalit with Justice DY Chandrachud (Photo | Express)

NEW DELHI: Chief Justice of India UU Lalit on Tuesday recommended to the Centre to appoint Justice DY Chandrachud, the senior-most judge after him as his successor and next CJI.

Initiating the process of appointment of the new CJI, Union Law Minister on Friday had written to Lalit requesting him to recommend his successor’s name.

Justice Lalit who took oath as the 49th CJI on August 27 will demit office after a short tenure of almost 74 days on November 8.

Appointed as SC judge in 2016, Justice DY Chandrachud will take oath as the 50th CJI on November 9, 2022. Justice Chandrachud, son of the 16th and longest-serving Chief Justice of India, Justice YV Chandrachud will have a tenure of almost two years.

He was designated as Senior Advocate by the Bombay High Court in 1998 and thereby served as the Additional Solicitor General of India from 1998 to 2000. He was appointed as an Additional Judge of the Bombay HC on March 29, 2000, and took oath as CJI of Allahabad HC on October 31, 2013.

On 29 March 2000, he was appointed as an Additional Judge of the Bombay High Court. He took oath as the Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court on 31 October 2013.

CJI designate DY Chandrachud was a part of the five-judge bench that delivered the famous Ayodhya verdict.

Recently, Justice Chandrachud in one of the landmark judgements authored by him which gave a massive boost to the reproductive rights of women ruled 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 falls foul of the spirit of right to equality.

Acknowledging the existence of abusive relationships within marital institutions, the bench headed by him while giving legal recognition to the offence of marital rape for the first time ruled that forceful pregnancy of a married woman can be treated as “marital rape” for the purposes of abortion.

Since his elevation as SC judge, Justice Chandrachud has been part of many constitutional benches that have delivered path-breaking verdicts such as the right to privacy being part of Article 21, decriminalisation of adultery and section 377 of IPC which criminalises consensual unnatural sex between consenting adults, entry of women into Sabarimala temple, and recognising “living will' made by terminally-ill patients for passive euthanasia.

He is one of the judges who has at times had stark contrast with his Co judges with a view to establishing that he intends to uphold the values of the Constitution irrespective of him being the lone dissenting voice echoing in chambers of the country's highest judicial body.

In the famous Aadhaar verdict, Justice Chandrachud while dissenting with the majority said 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.

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