Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju anounced on Monday that the President of India has appointed Justice DY Chandrachud, the senior-most judge in the Supreme Court, as the 50th Chief Justice of India. Justice Chandrachud will take charge as the new CJI on November 9, he said.
"In exercise of the power conferred by the Constitution of India, President appoints Dr. Justice DY Chandrachud, Judge, Supreme Court as the Chief Justice of India with effect from 9th November 2022," Rijiju tweeted.
Justice Chandrachud, who has been part of several Constitution benches and landmark verdicts of the top court including on matters relating to the Ayodhya land dispute, right to privacy and adultery, will become the 50th CJI, succeeding current CJI UU Lalit.
Chief Justice of India U U Lalit had last Tuesday recommended to the Centre the name of the senior-most Supreme Court judge Justice Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud as his successor.
Justice Chandrachud is the son of the longest serving CJI Y V Chandrachud. The former CJI was the head of the judiciary from February 22, 1978 to July 11, 1985.
Justice Chandrachud was also part of the benches which delivered path-breaking judgements on decriminalising same-sex relations after it partially struck down Section 377 of the IPC, validity of the Aadhaar scheme and Sabarimala issue. Recently, a bench headed by him expanded the scope of the Medical Termination of Pregnancy(MTP) Act and the corresponding rules to include unmarried women for abortion between 20-24 weeks of pregnancy.
The Justice Chandrachud-led bench had also passed several directions to assuage the miseries faced by people during the COVID-19 crisis, terming the brutal second wave of the pandemic last year as a "national crisis".
Recently, Justice Chandrachud was among the two judges of the apex court Collegium which had objected to the method of "circulation" adopted for eliciting the views of its members on the appointment of judges to the top court.
He was judge of the Bombay High Court from March 29, 2000 until his appointment as the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court from October 31, 2013.
Justice Chandrachud was designated as a senior advocate by the Bombay High Court in June 1998 and became Additional Solicitor General in the same year till his appointment as a judge.
After completing BA with Honours in Economics from St Stephen's College, New Delhi, Justice Chandrachud did his LLB from Campus Law Centre, Delhi University, and obtained LLM degree and a Doctorate in Juridical Sciences (SJD) from Harvard Law School, USA.
He practised law at the Supreme Court and the Bombay High Court and was a visiting professor of comparative Constitutional law at the University of Mumbai.
