New CJI Ranjan Gogoi pledges SC norms on `urgent’ hearings
03 Oct 2018
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Justice Ranjan Gogoi who succeeded Dipak Misra as the 46th Chief Justice of India today wowed to strictly follow the Supreme Court’s precedents that were the parameters on which the country’s highest court functioned.
The new CJI Ranjan Gogoi, who had drawn attention and scrutiny in January this year for holding an unprecedented press conference along with three other SC judges to express unease at the functioning of the highest court of the land, said the “parameters” will be worked out for the urgent mentioning and hearing of cases.
Justice Gogoi said “no urgent mentioning of cases will be allowed” till certain parameters are fixed for it. “We will work out the parameters then we will see as to how mentioning will be done,” he said.
“If somebody is going to be hanged tomorrow, then we can understand (urgency)”, the CJI said.
President Ram Nath Kovind administered the oath to 63-year-old Justice Gogoi at a brief ceremony in Rashtrapati Bhavan’s Darbar Hall.
Justice Gogoi will have a tenure of a little over 13 months as CJI and retire on 17 November 2019.
Justice Ranjan Gogoi, known for speaking his mind, is the first Chief Justice of India from the north-east and was legally the logical choice for CJI Misra as he was the next in seniority.
CJI Gogoi has had a long and dynamic career since the time he was enrolled as a lawyer in the bar council in 1978. He was made the permanent judge of the Gauhati High Court on 28 February 2001. He was transferred to the Punjab and Haryana High Court on 9 September 2010, and became its Chief Justice on 12 February 2011. He was elevated as an SC judge on 23 April 2012 with a tenure of over seven years, ie, till his retirement in November 2019.
CJI Gogoi was born on November 18, 1954, in Guwahati in a politically influential family. His father, Keshab Chandra Gogoi, was a lawyer-turned-politician and served as chief minister of Assam for two months during the 1980s.
CJI Gogoi's tenure as a SC judge has seen him be part of benches in a number of important cases - for example the May 2018 ruling regarding revoking a proposal from the Uttar Pradesh government that allowed all former chief ministers to retain their official residences and the judgment prohibiting the government from using photographs of anyone else except the PM, President and the CJI for advertising purposes. He also headed the special SC bench that is monitoring the revision of the National Register of Citizens (NRC) meant for identifying genuine residents of Assam.
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