Chief Justice B.R. Gavai: Mid-term Review

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“Many decades ago, millions of citizens of India were called untouchables. They were told they were impure. They were told that they did not belong. But here we are today where a person belonging to those very people is speaking openly as the holder of the highest office in the judiciary of the country.” This was Chief Justice BR Gavai’s opening at his speech at Oxford University this summer.

On 14 May this year he took oath as the 52nd Chief justice of India and only the second Dalit to ascend to the position. Three months into his six month tenure, we at the Supreme Court Observer take a look at what his term has been so far and the legacy he’ll likely leave behind. Justice Gavai inherited a court with around 82,000 pending cases, two vacancies and an approaching seven week partial working day break. Just one day before Justice Gavai started his new job, the President invoked the advisory jurisdiction for only the 16th time in 75 years, referring to the Supreme Court, a set of 14 questions on the powers of the Governor and the President to grant assent to state bills. A fairly full plate, but business as usual for the CJI of one of the world’s busiest apex courts.

One way the CJI can leave a personal stamp on a relatively short tenure of just six months is by ringing in long pending changes on the administrative side of the court. Three decades ago in RK Sabharwal v State of Punjab, the Court held that reservations must be granted on the basis of number of posts available in a cadre and not the number of vacancies. A month into his tenure, Chief Justice B.R. Gavai fittingly and finally implemented this affirmative action policy for the non judicial staff positions of the Court. While CJI Gavai has been a strong proponent of diversity of caste, class and gender, the Collegium under his leadership is yet to appoint a woman judge. Over the last few weeks we’ve also noticed CJI Gavai’s insistence on clarity around the master of roster powers. He recently criticised the 2023 decision of former CJI DY Chandrachud to suspend on the mere basis of a request by the Solicitor General, the verdict of a two judge bench. During oral proceedings in the case, CJI Gavai mentioned that a judgment could not be simply recalled because it was mentioned in the Chief’s Court. It is necessary to hear the parties before taking a decision.

“We believe in adherence to judicial propriety and judicial discipline,” CJ Gavai said. He also walked the talk after a bench of Justices J.B. Pardiwala and R. Mahadevan asked the Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court to remove Justice Prashant Kumar from the criminal roster and seat him alongside a “seasoned” judge. The censure came after Justice Kumar allowed a criminal case to be filed in a civil dispute. Instead of taking matters into his own hands, a course of action some of his predecessors may have preferred. CJI Gavai wrote a letter to the two judge bench directly requesting them to reconsider their decision. It was in deference to the convention that only the Chief Justice of a High Court has the power to allocate cases in the Court. The order was subsequently recalled by the bench. In his address at the Independence Day function organized by the Supreme Court Bar Association, the Chief Justice noted that the Supreme Court Collegium cannot “dictate” names to the High Court Collegium. While observing that the Supreme Court and the High Courts were neither superior nor inferior to each other in a federal judiciary, he said that the “first call” on High Court judges is always with the High Court Collegium.

We’re now into the second half of CJI Gavai’s short tenure. Pendency has increased to more than 87,000 cases. When his term had just begun, he had said, “I choose not to make promises. Let my work speak for itself when I retire six months from now”. We’ll continue watching his work and his utterances closely in the business end of the tenure. What legacy do you think he’ll leave behind?

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Thank you for watching and I’ll see you soon.