Justice Surya Kant takes oath as 53rd Chief Justice of India

Justice Surya Kant took oath as the 53rd Chief Justice of India on Monday (Nov 24), succeeding Justice BR Gavai following his retirement on Sunday. President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath to him during a ceremony at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. Ahead of taking office, Justice Kant said that his primary focus will remain on reducing the massive backlog of cases across courts in the country.

Justice Kant was appointed on October 30 and will serve the post for nearly 15 months. He will retire on February 9, 2027, upon attaining the age of 65 years.

Justice Kant previously served as chief justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court from October 5, 2018. Before that, he passed several key judgments in the Punjab and Haryana High Court.

“My first and foremost challenge is arrears of cases. Today's scoreboard shows that the Supreme Court arrears crossed 90,000. I am not going into how it happened, who is responsible... maybe listing (of cases) has gone up,” he told PTI earlier.

He further added, “Now the second issue is mediation. This is one of the easiest ways of dispute (re)solution, and it can really be the game changer.”

While hearing petitions regarding the Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voters list carried out by the poll panel, Justice Kant had also urged the Election Commission to provide details of the 65 lakh voters excluded from the draft electoral rolls in Bihar.