The Madras High Court is part of a troika of courts — the others being Mumbai and Delhi HCs — that are known for producing acclaimed legal luminaries. Yet, no one from Tamil Nadu has gone on to occupy the post of the Chief Justice of India.
That is set to change next month, with the elevation of Justice P Sathasivam (64) to India’s top legal post now being made official. While the second CJI of independent India, M Patanjali Sastri, was indeed from the Madras Bar, he hailed from Nellore in the erstwhile Madras Presidency. Nellore now belongs to Andhra Pradesh. Justice Sathasivam, on the other hand, will be the first ever native of Tamil Nadu to occupy the high office when he takes his oath of office and secrecy on July 19 – a day after incumbent Chief Justice Altamas Kabir retires after having a tenure of a little over nine months. Sathasivam, who will be the 40th CJI, will have tenure till April 26, 2014. It was on June 24 that the Law Ministry had proposed Justice Sathasivam’s name and the same was approved by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on June 27.
Justice Sathasivam will be the CJI at a time when the government is likely to initiate important judicial reforms. One of them is doing away with collegium system wherein the top five judges choose judges for the higher judiciary.
Born in Kandampannalur, a nondescript village in Erode district in April 1949, Sathasivam hailed from an agricultural family of which he was the first graduate. After graduating in law from the Madras Government Law College, he enrolled as an advocate in 1973.
Within a short period, Sathasivam began practice in various areas of law, including company law, which was at that point a niche area.
After over two decades of practice in which he also served as a government pleader, Sathasivam was appointed permanent judge of the Madras High Court in 1996, a post he occupied for over a decade. While he also had a short stint in the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2007, he was elevated to the Supreme Court the same year. Senior lawyers point out that Sathasivam was one of the very few elevated to the Supreme Court without being a chief justice of a high court.