NV Ramana recommends Justice Lalit as India's next chief justice
India is likely to get its only second Chief Justice (CJI) directly from the Bar nearly a month from now. CJI NV Ramana on Thursday recommended Justice Uday Umesh Lalit's name as his successor two days after the meeting of the Supreme Court's collegium. The top court's senior-most judge Justice Lalit will become the 49th CJI after the retirement of Ramana this month.
According to The Indian Express, the CJI "personally handed over a copy of his letter of recommendation dated 03.08.2022" to Justice Lalit "in the morning" on Thursday. The announcement comes barely a day after the CJI Secretariat received a correspondence from the Union Minister of Law and Justice requesting that he suggested the name of his successor.
According to tradition, the incumbent CJI suggests the name of his successor only after receiving an official communication from the Law Ministry asking him/her to do so. CJI Ramana is retiring on August 26 following which Justice Lalit will take over as the 49th Chief Justice of India. However, he has a limited term and will be in office until November 8, 2022.
Justice Lalit will be the second Chief Justice of SC, following Justice SM Sikri, who was chosen directly from the bar, as per The Indian Express. He was born in 1957 and became a lawyer in 1983 before the Bombay High Court. Prior to his appointment as an SC judge in 2014, he served as the Special Public Prosecutor for the CBI.
In 2019, Justice Lalit recused himself from the Ayodhya case, citing his representation of former Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Kalyan Singh in a contempt case related to the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Justice Lalit has just launched a case on his own initiative to streamline the procedure of considering mitigating circumstances in death sentence cases.
