Justice Sanjiv Khanna was sworn in as the 51st Chief Justice of India (CJI) at Rashtrapati Bhavan today. Said inauguration ritual conducted by newly elected President of India Droupadi Murmu started at 10:AM. Justice Khanna, aged 64 years will succeed Justice DY Chandrachud, whose term of service has been highly praised. Justice Khanna appointed for a fixed term of six months and will demitting his office on 13th May, 2025.
Justice Khanna is also rooted in a rather prominent legal family. His father Dev Raj Khanna was a judge of Delhi High Court and his uncle H. R. Khanna was a Supreme Court judge who had a great sense of duty on the bench but passed away in 1986. Justice Khanna began his career as an advocate from Delhi Bar Council in 1983 and got selection in Delhi High Court in the year 2005 and got transferred to Supreme Court in the year 2019.
Specifically, Justice Khanna has considerable practice in the following major fields of law; constitutional law, business litigations, taxation, arbitration, and environmental law. He has also stood as a senior standing counsel for income tax department Delhi National Capital Territory.
Altogether, justice Khanna has made elaborate contribution to the most prominent judgments of the Indian constitution. Among these is to defend the reliability of electronic voting machines (EVMs), to buttress their security as a way of combating electoral fraud, and to restore confidence of the public in the democratic systems of the country. He is also in the SC panel that validated the revocation of Article 370, which provided a special privilege to Jammu and Kashmir alone.
Some of his other landmark judgements are; Declaring electoral bonds constitutional as effective means of transparent funding of Political Parties as a means towards achieving ethical electoral process democracy. Earlier this year Justice Khanna also granted interim bail to AAP Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal in order to allow him campaign for the Lok Sabha elections. In another basic order, he dealt with the legal processing issues of former Delhi Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia holding that such processing could be a ground for bail under the PMLA.
Justice DY Chandrachud has completed his term and looked back at the many changes that he brought about. On the last day of his official last working day, Chief Justice Chandrachud said: “I must tell you that there is no better feeling than being able to make a difference for the needy.” To my mind his retirement signals the end of an era in Indian judiciary which was cherished for liberal and futuristic decisions. Justice Khanna now enters this pivotal position as a dawn of carrying on with bringing change in the culture of Indian legal system.
