Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar will be the 44th Chief justice of India who is going to take charge on January 4. He was appointed the next CJI on Monday with President Pranab Mukherjee signing his warrant of appointment.
The 64-year-old Justice Khehar will also be the first Sikh CJI when he would take over after Justice T S Thakur demits office on January 3. The tenure of the Justice Singh will be over seven months till August 27, 2017.
Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar ordered to sent Subrata Roy to jail
He has led the five-judge constitution bench which struck down the controversial National Judicial Appointments Commission for an appointment of judges. He had also headed the bench which set alone imposition of President’s rule in Arunachal Pradesh in January. In the other major case, he headed the bench which sent Sahara chief Subrata Roy to jail for his failure to return money to people who invested money in his two companies.
Justice Khehar’s awaiting appointment figured controversially in the Supreme Court last week when advocate Prashant Bhushan caused a sensation by seeking his recusal from hearing a PIL alleging corruption against PM Narendra Modi. Prashant was demanding to take him out from hearing because PM had to clear the file concerning his formal appointment as CJI.
Justice Khehar was upset to his statement and said it was ‘very unfair’.
“If you have no confidence in me then you should have said so earlier when the matter was being heard. The matter was heard on two dates but why are you raising the issue now?” the judge had said, expressing the willingness to recuse himself.
He was a law student of Punjab University and was honored with gold medal
Justice Singh has passed his LLB and LLM from Punjab University, Chandigarh and was honored with a gold medal for securing the first position in the university LLM examination. Justice Jagdish had practiced from Himachal Pradesh High Court and the Supreme Court before elevated as a judge of the Punjab and Haryana and High Court in Chandigarh on February 8, 1999.
He had been twice appointed as the acting Chief justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court from 2 August 2008 and again from 17 November 2009. He had served the Uttarakhand High court as a chief justice and later he transferred to Karnataka High Court as a chief justice on 13 September 2011
