Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde has been appointed as the next Chief Justice of India by President Ram Nath Kovind. Justice Bobde will take oath on November 18 to succeed the current Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi.
According to the reports, President Ram Nath Kovind on Tuesday signed a warrant appointing Justice Sharad Arvind Bobde as the next Chief Justice of India. Justice SA Bobde will be the 47th Chief Justice of India. His term will run until April 23, 2021.
Earlier, Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi had recommended the name of the next senior-most judge, Justice Bobde as his successor according to the convention of the Supreme Court.
As per the Memorandum of Procedure (MoP), which governs the appointment of members of the higher judiciary, the “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”. After receiving the Chief Justice’s recommendation, the Law Minister puts it before the Prime Minister, who then communicates this to the President.
Born on 24 April 1956 at Nagpur, Maharashtra, Justice Bobde studied in the Nagpur University. He joined the Bombay High Court in 2000 as an additional judge. In 2012, he became Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court.
He was elevated to the Supreme Court in April 2013. He has been involved in top cases before the Supreme Court, the BCCI case and petitions against firecrackers. Presently, he is the second senior-most judge of the country and is also serving as the Chancellor of Maharashtra National Law University, both at Mumbai and Nagpur.
Justice Bobde is also part of the five-judge constitution bench which just concluded hearing the Ram Janmabhoomi land dispute, the verdict for which is awaited and which is also one of the most crucial cases of the country. He, along with Justice Indira Banerjee and Indu Malhotra, had conducted the inquiry into an allegation of sexual harassment against CJI Gogoi.
Justice Ranjan Gogoi, who sworn in as Chief Justice on 3 October 2018, will retire on November 17. It is speculated that the Supreme Court bench headed by CJI Gogoi will deliver the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid judgement on or before November 17, the day CJI Ranjan Gogoi retires.
