New Delhi:
Justice Bhushan Ramkrishna Gavai will take the oath as the next Chief Justice of India on May 14, a day after incumbent Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna retires. As per tradition, the Chief Justice has sent a proposal to the Union Law Ministry, naming Justice Gavai as his successor. The ministry had earlier sought the Chief Justice’s proposal naming his successor.
Justice Gavai will be the Chief Justice of India for about six months as he is due to retire in November. He will be the second Dalit to hold the Chief Justice post after Justice KG Balakrishnan, who was elevated to the country’s top judicial post in 2007.
Hailing from Maharashtra’s Amravati, he joined the Bar 1985 and worked with barrister Raja Bhonsale, former Advocate General and Judge of the Maharashtra High Court. He then practised independently at the Bombay High Court from 1987 to 1990. Thereafter, he practised mainly before the Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court in matters related to Constitutional law and administrative law. He was appointed Assistant Government Pleader and Additional Public Prosecutor in the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court in August 1992. He was named Government Pleader and Public Prosecutor for the Nagpur bench in 2000. Justice Gavai became an Additional Judge of the High Court in 2003 and a permanent judge in 2005. He was elevated as a Supreme Court judge in 2019.
As a judge in the Supreme Court, Justice Gavai has been part of several landmark judgments. These include the verdict upholding the Centre’s 2016 demonetisation decision and the top court judgment declaring the electoral bonds scheme unconstitutional.
