On a day when the Narendra Modi government reportedly asked Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra to name his successor, there’s strong buzz that Justice Ranjan Gogoi is all set to be appointed as the next CJI on October 2nd this year.
Sources have said that current CJI Misra is likely to send Justice Gogoi’s name as an official confirmation to the law ministry. If the reports are confirmed, it will make Justice Gogoi the 46th Chief Justice of India. With less than one month to go for CJI Dipak Misra to demit the highest judicial office, speculations were rife that the succession might take an ugly turn.
According to age old conventions, the outgoing CJI recommends the name of the second senior most judge of the Supreme Court as his successor. There is no second guess that Justice Ranjan Gogoi is the second senior most judge due to be elevated to the post of CJI.
Earlier, rumours about the government introducing a bill to increase the retirement age of judges were doing the rounds in media only to be later put to rest by law ministry denying such speculations.
For the uninitiated, Justice Ranjan Gogoi was one of the four senior Supreme Court judges, who virtually revolted against CJI Misra over "selective" case allocation and certain judicial orders in January this year.
The four senior Supreme Court judges -- Justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, MB Lokur and Kurian Joseph -- had called a press conference in New Delhi in second week of January and said the situation in the top court was "not in order" and that many "less than desirable" things had taken place.
At the unprecedented press conference, Justice Gogoi had hinted that the allocation of a case seeking an investigation in the death of special CBI judge BH Loya to a junior judge led to the ‘revolt’.
