Chief Justice of India (CJI) BR Gavai has recommended the name of Justice Surya Kant to the Centre as the next CJI. At present, Justice Kant is the second senior-most judge in the Supreme Court after the incumbent CJI Gavai. He will become the 53rd CJI on November 24 after CJI Gavai’s retirement on November 23, a report said.
CJI Gavai has sent his recommendation to the Union law ministry to appoint Justice Surya Kant as the next CJI, sources said, reported PTI. Justice Gavai was sworn in as the CJI on May 14 this year, and he will retire on the 23rd of the next month. The retirement age of Supreme Court judges is 65 years.
Justice Surya Kant – The next CJI
Justice Surya Kant was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court on May 24, 2019 and he would have a tenure of over 1.2 years as the CJI. He is due to retire on February 9, 2027. He has served as a judge for over 14 years in Punjab and Haryana HC, after which he was promoted as Himachal Pradesh HC Chief Justice and later as a SC judge.
He was born on Feb 10, 1962, in Petwar village of Haryana’s Hisar. He completed his early education from this place only, and later went on to pursue LLB in 1984 from MDU.
He began his career as a lawyer at Hisar district court before moving to Chandigarh to practice at Punjab and Haryana HC. According to reports, he was the youngest advocate general of Haryana at 38. He was elevated as a judge of Punjab and Haryana HC at the age if 42 in 2004.
But Justice Kant did not leave his love for academics behind, he secured first-class-first in his master’s degree in law in 2011 from Kurukshetra University’s directorate of distance education.
Judgments by Justice Kant
While in Punjab and Haryana HC, Justice Kant was part of the full bench that ordered sanitisation of Dera Sacha Sauda in 2017 following violence after imprisonment of the Dera chief in rape cases. The bench had then also directed a central probe into financial irregularities inside it.
Justice Kant has also been a member of the governing body of National Legal Services Authority from 2007 to 2011.
