Dipak Misra takes oath: 10 things to know about India’s new chief justice

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Updated: Aug 28, 2017 13:20 IST

Justice Dipak Misra took oath as India 45th Chief Justice on Monday following the retirement JS Khehar a day earlier.

At a brief ceremony in the Darbar Hall of Rashtrapati Bhawan, President Ramnath Kovind administered the oath of office to Justice Misra took the oath in English.

The eloquent Justice Misra, known for quoting from Shakespeare and the Vedas in his orders, will remain in office till October 2, 2018.

Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and several Union ministers were present at the ceremony. Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress president Sonia Gandhi, leader of the opposition in the Rajya Sabha Ghulam Nabi Azad also attended the oath ceremony.

Prime Minister Modi congratulated the new CJI in a tweet:

I congratulate Justice Dipak Misra on taking oath as the Chief Justice of India. I wish him the very best & a fruitful tenure. — Narendra Modi (@narendramodi) August 28, 2017

Here are 10 things to know about India’s 45th Chief Justice:

1. Justice Misra has served as the chief justice of the Patna high court and the Delhi high court before being elevated to the apex court in October 2011.

2. After his enrolment as an advocate in 1977, he started his practice in constitutional, civil, criminal, revenue, service and sales tax matters in the Orissa high court.

3. He was appointed as an additional judge of the Orissa high court on January 17, 1996. He was later transferred to the Madhya Pradesh high court. He became a permanent judge on December 19, 1997.

4. He is the third CJI from Odisha, after Justices Ranganath Misra and G B Pattanaik.

5. He was part of the bench that confirmed the four convicts in the December 16 gang rape. The “brutal, barbaric and diabolic nature” of the crime could create a “tsunami of shock” to destroy a civilised society, the verdict, penned by Justice Misra, had said.

6. He headed the bench which, in an unprecedented pre-dawn hearing in 2015 when the doors of the apex court were opened at 1am, rejected last-ditch efforts by Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon to stay his execution.

7. He headed the bench that passed the order for mandatory singing of the national anthem in cinema halls across the country.

8. Another significant judgment by Justice Misra was the one directing states and Union Territories to upload FIRs on websites within 24 hours of their registration for enabling accused and others to file appropriate pleas in the courts for redress.

9. Justice Misra, along with Justice P C Pant, had in May, declined to de-criminalise defamation -- an offence punishable with two years in jail apart from fine -- saying the right to free speech cannot mean that a citizen can defame anybody.

10. Justice Misra is currently presiding over a bench hearing the Cauvery and Krishna river water disputes, BCCI reforms and Sahara case among others.