Who is Justice Surya Kant? Sworn in as the 53rd Chief Justice of India, succeeding Justice B R Gavai
&imwidth=600&imheight=450&format=webp&quality=medium "Who is Justice Surya Kant? Sworn in as the 53rd Chief Justice of India, succeeding Justice B R Gavai")
File photo of Justice Surya Kant. Photograph: (ANI)
From the abrogation of Article 370, removing Jammu and Kashmir's special status, to the Bihar electoral rolls revision and Pegasus spyware case, Justice Kant has been a part of several high-profile cases.
Justice Surya Kant took oath as the 53rd Chief Justice of India on Monday after succeeding Justice BR Gavai. He will serve for nearly 15 months and will demit office on February 9, 2027, on attaining the age of 65 years. From the abrogation of Article 370, removing Jammu and Kashmir's special status, to the Bihar electoral rolls revision and Pegasus spyware case, Justice Kant has been a part of several high-profile cases.
Who is Justice Surya Kant?
Born on February 10, 1962, in the Hisar district of Haryana to a middle-class family, Justice Surya Kant graduated from the Government Post Graduate College, Hisar, in 1981 and completed a bachelor's degree in law from Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak, in 1984.
In 1984, he began practising law at the district court in Hisar and later shifted to Chandigarh in 1985 to practice in the Punjab and Haryana High Court. In 2000, he became the youngest Advocate General of Haryana. Interestingly, in 2011, Justice Kant had the distinction of standing 'first class first' in his master's degree in law from Kurukshetra University.
Justice Kant was appointed chief justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court in 2018 before being elevated to the Supreme Court the following year. At the apex court, he has been involved in several significant rulings, including the recent presidential reference concerning the powers of governors and the president in handling bills passed by state legislatures. He was also on the bench that put the colonial-era sedition law on hold, instructing authorities not to file new cases under it until the government completed its review.
Justice Kant was part of the Special Intensive Revision (SIR)
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In another matter, Justice Kant pressed the Election Commission to make public the details of 65 lakh voters left out of Bihar’s draft electoral rolls while hearing petitions challenging the poll body’s Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voters’ list, ahead of the state’s assembly elections.
He also headed a bench that reinstated a woman sarpanch who had been unlawfully removed from her post, highlighting gender bias in the decision. Additionally, he is credited with directing that one-third of positions in bar associations, including the Supreme Court Bar Association, be reserved for women.
To investigate the security breach during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Punjab in 2022, he was part of the bench that appointed a five-member committee headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Indu Malhotra and also upheld the One Rank-One Pension scheme for defence forces.
Justice Kant also sat on the seven-judge bench that overruled the judgment of the 1967 Aligarh Muslim University, directing and opening the way for reconsideration of the minority status of the institution. He was further part of the bench that heard the Pegasus spyware matter, appointing a panel of cyber experts to investigate allegations of unlawful surveillance and stressing that the state cannot be granted a “free pass” in the name of national security.
