Justice Surya Kant took oath as the 53rd Chief Justice of India (CJI) on Monday, succeeding Justice BR Gavai. President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath to Justice Kant at a brief ceremony held at Rashtrapati Bhavan. He took the oath in Hindi in the name of God.
Justice Kant was appointed as the CJI designate on October 30 and will occupy the office till February 9, 2027, when he demits the position. Vice President CP Radhakrishnan and Prime Minister Narendra Modi were among the senior leaders who attended the ceremony.
Justice Kant has been part of several landmark verdicts, including on the abrogation of Article 370, removing Jammu and Kashmir’s special status and the Bihar electoral rolls revision.
Born on February 10, 1962, in Hisar district of Haryana to a middle-class family, Justice Kant went from being a small-town lawyer to the country’s highest judicial officer.
He also has the distinction of standing ‘first class first’ in his Master’s degree in law from Kurukshetra University.
Justice Kant, who penned several notable judgments in the Punjab and Haryana HC, was appointed the chief justice of Himachal Pradesh HC on October 5, 2018.
His tenure as an SC judge is marked by verdicts on the abrogation of Article 370, free speech and citizenship rights.
The judge was part of the recent presidential reference on the powers of the Governor and President in dealing with bills passed by a state assembly.
He was part of the bench that kept the colonial-era sedition law in abeyance, directing that no new FIRs be registered under it until a government review.
Justice Kant also nudged the Election Commission to disclose the details of 65 lakh voters excluded from the draft electoral rolls in Bihar while hearing a batch of petitions challenging the poll panel’s decision to undertake Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voters list in the poll-bound state.
In an order that emphasised grassroots democracy and gender justice, he led a bench that reinstated a woman sarpanch unlawfully removed from office and called out the gender bias in the matter.
He is also credited with directing that one-third of seats in bar associations, including the Supreme Court Bar Association, be reserved for women.
Justice Kant was part of the bench that appointed a five-member committee headed by former top court judge Justice Indu Malhotra to probe the security breach during Prime Minister Modi’s visit to Punjab in 2022, saying such matters required “a judicially trained mind”.
He also upheld the One Rank-One Pension scheme for defence forces, calling it constitutionally valid, and continues to hear petitions of women officers in the armed forces seeking parity in permanent commission.
Justice Kant was on the seven-judge bench that overruled the 1967 Aligarh Muslim University judgment, opening the way for reconsideration of the institution’s minority status.
He was also part of the bench which heard the Pegasus spyware case and which appointed a panel of cyber experts to probe allegations of unlawful surveillance, famously stating that the state cannot get a “free pass under the guise of national security”.