NEW DELHI: Chief Justice of India (CJI) D Y Chandrachud, set to retire on November 10, recommends senior-most Supreme Court judge Justice Sanjiv Khanna for appointment as the 51st CJI. Justice Khanna is scheduled to be sworn in on November 11 and will serve as CJI for six months until his retirement on May 13, 2025.
Justice Khanna, who has been a Supreme Court judge since January 18, 2019, has participated in several significant cases. He was part of the bench that ruled the electoral bonds scheme unconstitutional and was also involved in the case related to the repeal of Article 370. In his separate judgment on electoral bonds, Justice Khanna argued that the scheme violated the right to information under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution, highlighting the need for transparency in electoral funding and its impact on democratic governance.
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In the Article 370 verdict, Justice Khanna gave a concurring opinion, stating that Article 370 represented asymmetric federalism and that its removal would not disrupt India’s federal structure. Additionally, he granted bail to former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia, shaping the jurisprudence around the right to bail for undertrial prisoners based on prolonged incarceration.
Justice Khanna, born on May 14, 1960, studied law at the Campus Law Centre, Delhi University, and became an advocate with the Bar Council of Delhi in 1983. He was appointed an additional judge of the Delhi High Court on June 25, 2005, and became a permanent judge in 2006. Currently, he also serves as the executive chairman of the National Legal Services Authority. He comes from a family of legal luminaries, with his father, Justice Dev Raj Khanna, having retired as a judge of the Delhi High Court, and his uncle, Justice Hans Raj Khanna, remembered for his famous dissenting judgment in the ADM Jabalpur case during the Emergency.
Justice Khanna has authored 117 judgments and been part of 456 Benches so far, contributing significantly to India’s legal landscape.