President Draupadi Murmu administered the oath of office to the Chief Justice of India to Supreme Court Judge, Justice Sanjiv Khanna, on Monday.
The 51st Chief Justice of India’s swearing-in ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan saw Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi, government Ministers, former Chief Justices of India, and sitting and retired judges of the Supreme Court and High Courts in attendance.
After being sworn in, Chief Justice Khanna acknowledged the gathered audience before travelling the short distance to the Supreme Court to preside at Court One – as the Chief Justice’s court is called – to hear the 47 cases listed before him and his Bench companion, Justice Sanjay Kumar.
Next door, in Court Two, where he had presided for months before his appointment as Chief Justice on November 11, hangs the life-size portrait of his uncle, the legendary Justice HR Khanna, whose championing of personal liberty during the dark days of Emergency in 1977 cost him his Chief Justiceship of India. The story of the elder Justice Khanna continues to resonate as activists and citizens booked under draconian laws struggle for bail.
Chief Justice Khanna, in his decision to grant former Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal interim bail, had termed personal liberty a sacrosanct right upon finding that the latter had been incarcerated for over 90 days in the liquor policy case.
Justice Khanna (as he was then) had also asked a larger Bench to decide bail conditions that could be applied in cases similar to Kejriwal’s, when a sitting Chief Minister, in an unprecedented move by the Central agencies, was arrested and remanded on money-laundering charges.
Another notable judgment of Justice Khanna, who had sat in over 450 Benches in the apex court, was his verdict giving the thumbs-up to EVMs while declining to revive paper ballots.
Justice Khanna, in that judgment, had favoured maintaining balance and criticised the tendency to blindly trust institutions and systems, saying such an attitude would only breed “unwarranted scepticism and impede progress”.
Recently Justice Khanna made a point while hearing petitions challenging the inclusion of ‘secularism’ and ‘socialism’ in the Preamble through the 42nd Amendment. He had observed that secularism was always a part of the Constitution and an ingredient of its basic structure.
In the past five years as Supreme Court judge, Justice Khanna’s experience on the Bench was varied. He was part of the Bench headed by Chief Justice Gogoi which heard on April 20, 2019, sexual harassment allegations levelled by a former Supreme Court staffer against the Chief Justice. His court refused to intervene in a case against the elevation of Madras High Court judge, Justice Lekshmana Chandra Victoria Gowri.
Chief Justice Khanna, who has a six-month tenure, would face challenges like high pendency in the top court, the increasing use of technology to guide its day-to-day functioning and timely judicial appointments.
The Khanna Collegium would have two immediate vacancies to fill in the Supreme Court. It would be seen if he would replace Justice Hima Kohli, who retired recently, with another woman judge. The Collegium would have to fill the vacancy left by Justice DY Chandrachud too. Two more judges, Justices Hrishikesh Roy and CT Ravikumar, will be retiring in January 2025.
It is to be seen if Chief Justice Khanna would constitute Constitution Benches to hear seminal issues like the government’s use of the Money Bill route to pass contentious amendments in laws like the Prevention of Money Laundering Act in Parliament.
Another reference, triggered from the Sabarimala temple entry for women case, on the question of whether certain essential religious practices of various religious faiths should be constitutionally protected has been pending for a long. The case requires an answer on the contours of judicial review in ecumenical issues. The case was referred to a nine-judge Bench in 2018.
As Chief Justice and master of roster, Chief Justice Khanna would have to allocate cases, including sensitive ones dealing with urgent pleas for bail, to individual Benches of the court. The allocation of cases and choice of Benches have seen consistent criticism through the tenures of past Chief Justices.
Chief Justice Khanna’s legal practice began in the hard-boiled atmosphere of the district courts of the national capital in 1983 after he read law at Delhi University. He has handled cases across various fields, including constitutional, direct taxation, arbitration, commercial, company, land and environmental laws in the Delhi High Court.
As a lawyer, he was a senior standing Counsel for the Income Tax Department and the National Capital Territory of Delhi. He had appeared as an Additional Public Prosecutor and amicus curiae in the High Court.
He was elevated as an Additional Judge of the Delhi High Court in 2005 and made a Permanent Judge in 2006.
He was one of the few judges elevated to the Supreme Court directly from his parent High Court. He had never functioned as a Chief Justice of a State High Court. He had superseded 32 High Court judges ahead of him in seniority to be appointed apex court judge.
Justice Khanna assumed office as Supreme Court judge on January 18, 2019. He is scheduled to retire on May 13, 2025.