Justice Surya Kant to Take Charge as CJI on Monday

New Delhi: Justice Surya Kant will take oath on Monday as the 53rd Chief Justice of India. He will succeed Chief Justice B.R. Gavai, who demits office this evening. Justice Kant was appointed CJI on October 30 and will serve a tenure of nearly 15 months, demitting office on February 9, 2027, upon reaching 65 years of age.

Born on February 10, 1962, in Hisar district of Haryana, Justice Kant rose from a small-town legal practice to the country’s highest judicial office. He holds a “first class first” Master’s degree in Law from Kurukshetra University, earned in 2011. He was a key figure in several landmark Supreme Court verdicts.

Before his elevation to the Supreme Court, he served as Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court from October 2018 and earlier delivered several notable judgments in the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

His tenure as a Supreme Court judge is marked by contributions to critical constitutional matters. He was part of the benches that upheld the abrogation of Article 370, paused the colonial-era sedition law, and ordered a probe into the Pegasus spyware allegations. He also played a key role in pushing the Election Commission to disclose details of 65 lakh missing voters during the Bihar electoral roll revision.

Justice Kant was part of the presidential reference pertaining to the powers of Governors and the President over state legislation—a verdict with wide ramifications that is still awaited.

He led a bench that reinstated a woman sarpanch who was unlawfully removed, calling out gender bias, and later directed that one-third of all seats in bar associations, including the Supreme Court Bar Association, be reserved for women. He also upheld the One Rank-One Pension (OROP) scheme and continues to hear cases related to granting permanent commission parity for women officers in the armed forces.

Justice Kant served on the seven-judge bench that overturned the 1967 Aligarh Muslim University ruling, paving the way for reconsideration of AMU’s minority status. He was also part of the bench that appointed a committee headed by Justice Indu Malhotra to probe the 2022 security breach during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Punjab, stating that such inquiries required “a judicially trained mind.”

Known for his firm views on civil liberties, Justice Kant famously remarked during the Pegasus hearings that the state cannot be given a “free pass under the guise of national security.”

He now prepares to assume leadership of the Supreme Court at a time of significant constitutional churn and high-stakes litigation.