NEW DELHI, Aug 4: Justice Uday Umesh Lalit will be the next chief justice of India to succeed the current CJI NV Ramana who is due to retire on August 26.
Ramana on Thursday formally recommended Justice UU Lalit’s name as his successor to the union law ministry. He handed over a copy of his recommendation later to Justice Lalit when they met over tea on Thursday morning before the start of the court.
Justice UU Lalit will be the 49th CJI and his tenure will last only for 74 days before he retires on November 8 at the age of 65. Justice Ramana, who took over from SA Bobde in April last year, had a tenure of over 16 months. After Justice UU Lalit, Justice DY Chandrachud is next in line to head the country’s judiciary. His father Justice YV Chandrachud remained CJI, too — and the longest-serving so far, with a seven-year tenure from 1978 to 1985. The shortest tenure so far has been 17 days, served by Justice Kamal Narain Singh in 1991.
Chief Justice Ramana had at 9.30 p.m. on Wednesday received a communication from the law minister Kiren Rijuju seeking his recommendation for appointment of the next top judge. Sources said Chief Justice Ramana recommended Justice Lalit’s name in a matter of minutes after receiving Rijiju’s letter. Justice Lalit is currently the senior most judge after Ramana.
The ‘Memorandum of Procedure of Appointment of Supreme Court Judges’ says “appointment to the office of the Chief Justice of India should be of the senior most Judge of the Supreme Court considered fit to hold the office.” The process, according to the Memorandum, begins with the Union Law Minister seeking the recommendation of the outgoing CJI about the next appointment.
Justice Lalit, as CJI, will head the collegium of judges that decides on appointments and other matters of judiciary. Before being elevated to judgeship in the Supreme Court on August 13, 2014, UU Lalit was a senior advocate in the court. His father, UR Lalit, was also a lawyer who later became a judge in the Delhi High Court.
Among several landmark judgements that Justice UU Lalit he’s been part of, one that made headlines for several days was on divorce among Muslims. The practice of “instant triple talaq” was held as illegal and unconstitutional in the verdict of August 2017 by a five-judge Constitution, by a 3-2 majority.
The then CJI JS Khehar and Justice S Abdul Nazeer were in favour of putting the judgment on hold for six months and asking the government to come out with a law to that effect. But Justices Kurian Joseph, RF Nariman and UU Lalit held the practice as to be violative of the Constitution.
Justices Khehar, Joseph and Nariman have since retired.
In a judgment that overruled two high court verdicts, a bench headed by Justice Lalit ruled that touching private parts of a child’s body, or any act involving physical contact, with “sexual intent” amounts to “sexual assault” under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
In June last year, he became executive chairperson of the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA), and focused on use of technology. Born in 1957, he started out as a lawyer in 1983, and ran his practice at the Bombay High Court till the end of 1985. He shifted to Delhi in January 1986 and was designated Senior Advocate by the Supreme Court in April 2004. Ten years later, he became a judge.
(Manas Dasgupta)
