If cleared by govt., he will have a tenure of about 13 months

Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra on Tuesday recommended Justice Ranjan Gogoi as his successor and the 46th Chief Justice of India.

Law Ministry sources confirmed the receipt of the recommendation letter of the Chief Justice.

If the government approves the recommendation, Justice Gogoi would have a tenure as Chief Justice of India of about 13 months, from October 3, 2018 till his retirement on November 17, 2019. Chief Justice Misra has followed convention by recommending the next senior most Supreme Court judge, Justice Gogoi, as his successor in office.

Justice Gogoi, born on November 18, 1954, is a native of Assam. He joined the Bar in 1978 and practised mainly in the Gauhati High Court. He was appointed as permanent judge of the Gauhati High Court on February 28, 2001. He was transferred to the Punjab and Haryana High Court on September 9, 2010 and appointed its Chief Justice in February 2011. He was elevated to the Supreme Court on April 23, 2012.

He would be the first CJI from the north-eastern region. He is the son of Keshab Chandra Gogoi, a former Assam Chief Minister during the Indian National Congress regime in 1982.

Justice Gogoi was one of the four senior most Supreme Court judges who held the January 12 press conference bringing up the issue of selective assignment of sensitive cases by recent CJIs to certain judges in the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Misra subsequently published a subject-wise roster of cases assigned to judges in the Supreme Court. In various judgments, one of them by a Constitution Bench led by Chief Justice Misra himself, the Supreme Court went on to declare the CJI the ‘master of roster.’

In a recent lecture, Justice Gogoi said the country needs independent journalists and ‘noisy judges.’

Justice Gogoi is heading the Bench monitoring the sensitive Assam NRC case.

The Benches led by Justice Gogoi have dealt largely with the issue of corruption in politics and public life. In fact, Justice Gogoi has led the Bench which ordered the Centre to set up special courts to “exclusively” try MPs and MLAs as a means to de-criminalise politics.

Justice Gogoi’s Bench is also monitoring the progress made by the government in the appointment of anti-corruption ombudsman Lokpal.

Justice Gogoi’s Bench had also pronounced the scathing judgment against an Uttar Pradesh law, which had allowed former chief ministers to retain their bungalows, staff and other perks. The judgment had forced several U.P. political heavyweights and former chief ministers to vacate their official bungalows.

Justice Gogoi authored the judgment in the rape and murder of 23-year-old Soumya in Kerala. The judgment commuted the death penalty of convict Govindaswamy to life imprisonment. The fallout of the judgment saw unprecedented scenes when former Supreme Court judge, Justice Markandey Katju, who had criticised the verdict in his blog, was challenged by Justice Gogoi’s Bench to come to the Supreme Court and prove his criticism right. The stormy hearing ended up with Justice Katju being issued contempt of court notice.

Among the important cases heard by a Bench led by Justice Gogoi are the appeals filed by the Rajiv Gandhi assassination case convicts for remission of their life sentences.

Justice Gogoi has played a vital role in upgrading the Supreme Court creche within the court complex.