Who’s The Next Chief Justice of India? Justice Ranjan Gogoi?

It is the last lap for the top five of the Supreme Court of India. Four of the five senior-most justices, including Chief Justice Dipak Misra, will retire before the end of this year. The others are Justices J Chelameshwar, Madan Lokur and Kurian Joseph.

Justice Ranjan Gogoi is the exception. He will see the new year in office. He is retiring only on November 17, 2019. At present, he is number three in the seniority list after the Chief Justice (retires on October 2) and Justice Chelameshwar (retires on June 22) and is technically in line to be the next Chief Justice of India. Senior number four Justice Lokur retires on December 30 and senior number 5 Justice Joseph on November 29.

The top four were in the news since this January when they publicly aired their grievance against the chief justice. There were subsequent, half-hearted attempts at reconciliation. The wedge was quite deep. It became evident when the Supreme Court constituted a constitution bench of five justices to hear the petition by two Congress MPs against the dismissal of the party’s impeachment petition against the chief justice. None of the seniormost four justices was named to the bench. Instead, the next five justices in the seniority list – from number six to number 10 --  were chosen. The seniormost of them, Justice Arjan Kumar Sikri, headed this bench.

Given the seemingly unending tussle within the court premises, there is some speculation over the name of the successor to Chief Justice Misra. By seniority, it is Justice Ranjan Gogoi. Those in the know say the tradition of following the seniority list will prevail.  They contend that there is now a precedent of justices airing their views in public, and any deviation from the said tradition might lead to another such public airing of dissent. That certainly does not bode well for the health of the top judiciary.

By the way, here is some interesting information about the next top 5 led by Justice Sikri. As stated above, they came together to be part of the constitution bench on the impeachment motion review petition. The other four are Justices Sharad Arvind Bobde, N V Ramana, Arun Kumar Mishra and Adarsh Kumar Goel,. The last of this list, Justice Goel, retires first, on July 6 this year. Sikri follows, on March 6, 2019. 

Of the remaining three in this list, Justice Bobde will be the seniormost, with a tenure till April 23, 2021. The next in the list is Justice Ramana who has time till August 26, 2022. He is followed by Justice Arun Mishra who retires on September 2, 2020. Thus, of these five justices, only Justice Bobde will be in service to succeed Justice Gogoi. The next in line for the chair is Justice Ramana.

A couple of words on Justice Gogoi, logically India’s next chief justice. He is said to be a sensible and sensitive judge. Rightly or wrongly, he invited scathing criticism from across the country for appearing in two separate benches which withheld death sentences to rapists whose brutally-attacked-and-raped victims eventually died of injuries.

Both cases were of September, 2016. Justices Gogoi, Prafulla Pant and Uday Lalit happened to be in both benches. One case was of a minor girl of Madhya Pradesh who was raped brutally and who died of injuries. The other was of a young girl from Kerala who was molested and attacked, thrown out of a train, raped on the tracks, hurt and left to die. She too succumbed to her injuries. Both were brutal cases attack and rape. In both cases, the trial court gave death sentence to the accused. In both cases, the concerned high courts upheld the sentence.

The Supreme Court bench, hearing the review petition in the minor girl’s case altered the conviction under section 302 (death for murder) but upheld life imprisonment for rape. (http://www.livelaw.in/rape-upholds-lifer-rape/)  In the Kerala case too, the bench came to a similar conclusion. In both cases, the benefit of doubt was given to the accused on the charge of murder. (http://www.livelaw.in/breaking-soumya-rape-murder-case-sc-acquits-govindachami-murder-charges-awards-life-term-rape/) Go through the judgments – they make for eyebrow-raising reading.

Experts from various fields questioned both judgments for stretching the benefit of doubt concept a bit far. Barely a year later, another bench of the Supreme Court, headed by Chief Justice Misra, upheld the death sentence for the rape and death of Nirbhaya. The justices said the aggravating circumstances clearly outweighed the mitigating circumstances and thus there was no question of converting the death sentence to a life term. Incidentally, Nirbhaya too had succumbed to her injuries. Of course, in the Nirbhaya case, some would say there was intense national pressure surrounding it. In the other two cases, some would also try to split hairs and quibble over whether the accused only wanted to rape and not murder the victim. How dumb! But that debate is for another day.