Who is Surya Kant?: The making of the 53rd Chief Justice

On 7 July 2000, the young Surya Kant Sharma, an advocate practising in the Punjab and Haryana High Court took over as the third Advocate-General of Om Prakash Chautala’s government in Haryana. His appointment at the age of 38 followed the sudden resignation of his predecessor, M.L. Sarin, the previous day.

The appointment caught young Sharma unawares, although his name had earlier done the rounds when the first AG under the Chautala Government, Mohan Jain, had quit in November 1999. It appears that Chautala had Sharma’s name in mind for the constitutional post after Jain quit. But Sharma’s age came in the way.

Sharma had represented a number of universities, boards, corporations, banks and the High Court before earning the distinction of being appointed the youngest AG. In March 2001, less than a year after his appointment as AG, he was designated as Senior Advocate. 

Surya Kant was born into a middle-class family from Petwar village in Haryana’s Hisar district. Many members of his family were teachers. He studied at the village school at Petwar, and earned his law degree from the Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak. He joined the legal profession in 1984 as a first-generation lawyer. After practising for a couple of months at the Hisar district courts, he shifted his practice to the Punjab & Haryana High Court. 

This is when he began building his reputation as an expert in service law. In the High Court, Surya Kant represented several officers occupying key posts in the Chautala regime before the Central Administrative Tribunal and the High Court. He was briefed widely by state bodies (universities, boards, corporations, banks and even the High Court itself) before being tapped as AG. 

In a recent address at the convocation of a law university, Justice Surya Kant spoke about his habit of “meticulous self-examination”—he said that he maintained a notebook to “record oversights and gaps in thinking.” He said that this practice proved invaluable during his time as a young lawyer in the P&H High Court and then during his tenure as AG. 

Three High Court cases from his years as Haryana’s AG reveal the issues he often grappled with, and how he argued them. In Sham Lal v State of Haryana (2001) the Bench requested the AGs of both Punjab and Haryana to assist. Surya Kant supported the petitioner’s view that Lok Adalats under the 1987 Act cannot decide cases on merits; their remit is to facilitate settlements. The Bench accepted his submission.  

In Subhash Sharma @ Subhash Chander v State of Haryana (2001) a Cabinet Minister was in the dock for illegal mining in Faridabad. Surya Kant informed the High Court that the Vigilance Bureau had initiated an enquiry and a formal FIR would follow. He batted for the state to be permitted to investigate the case, and also acknowledged that it was important to take effective steps to check illegal mining. Eventually, the High Court directed the CBI to investigate the case. This matter is significant because it shows him advocating firmly for the state while also openly recognising the systemic concerns around illegal mining.

In Court on its own motion v Ajay Bansal (2004), the High Court found substance in the allegations of attempts to scandalise the appointment of a judge by two newspapers and by an advocate. The High Court held the journalists and the advocate guilty of contempt. The High Court Bench recorded Surya Kant, then AG, as amicus curiae at the Court’s request—often a signal of institutional confidence in counsel beyond adversarial roles. 

On 9 January 2004, he joined the Punjab and Haryana High Court, with one newspaper describing him as “perhaps the youngest serving High Court Judge in the country.” It is likely that around this time Sharma may have decided to give up his surname, and simply go by Surya Kant.   

Senior Advocate Anupam Gupta, who practises in the Punjab and Haryana High Court, recalled his appearance as amicus curiae before Justice Surya Kant (as he then was) in Jasvir Singh v State of Punjab (2014). The case arose from a request by a married couple serving life sentences in the Central Jail, Patiala, to conceive a child through artificial insemination. Rejecting the state’s argument that incarceration extinguished such personal claims, Justice Surya Kant located the plea within Article 21’s protection of life and liberty 

The Judgement articulated a rare harmony between restraint and empathy: while denying the couple immediate relief, it directed the government to establish a Jail Reforms Committee and to formulate a policy on conjugal and family visits, setting eligibility and procedural safeguards. The decision was among the first to treat the emotional life of prisoners as constitutionally cognisable. It anticipated later Supreme Court and Law Commission discussions on family contact, gendered separation and reproductive rights. 

“The arguments went on for several months,” Gupta told the Supreme Court Observer, “I found Justice Surya Kant exceptionally receptive. He is intellectually very bright, keen and insightful. He has a very strong reformist bent of mind. He is not someone who would focus on disposal alone, without considering the quality of outcome.” 

In Sewerage Employees Union (Regd) M.C. Chandigarh v Union of India  (2008), Justice Surya Kant observed that the working conditions of those employed for cleaning the underground sewage lines were wholly incompatible with human dignity and hazardous for their health and safety. The Order mandated an expert committee to design a mechanisation plan, compulsory safety equipment, insurance coverage and medical surveillance. It also reminded civic bodies that social security benefits like Provident Fund, insurance, gratuity, maternity leave and minimum wages were non-negotiable statutory obligations. In doing so, the Judgement placed sanitation work within the continuum of occupational rights under Article 21. Its insistence on deadlines and compliance reports foreshadowed the later shift from post-facto compensation to prevention-based governance in labour welfare. 

Justice K. Kannan, who served as a Judge in the Punjab and Haryana High Court from 2008 to 2016 told the Supreme Court Observer that Justice Surya Kant played an active role in the post-lunch sessions where the judges had decided they could discuss all manner of topics but the law. The punishment for judges who used to ‘break’ the rule in these informal discussions was bringing homemade lunch for all the other judges the next day.  

But Justice Kannan remembers one exception to this rule: the case of Chandigarh Administration v Nemo. This matter was animatedly discussed for several weeks at these meetings. He recalled that this was the case of a mentally disabled woman who did not know what sex meant, but became pregnant, and kept referring to the child in her womb as a ‘doll’.   Although Justice Surya Kant’s order in this case (which directed abortion of the pregnancy) was reversed by the Supreme Court, Justice Kannan found Justice Surya Kant’s articulation extremely powerful. “He is someone who is proficient in all subjects,” Justice Kannan said while recalling those days in the High Court. 

Justice Surya Kant’s 2018 posting as the Chief Justice of Himachal Pradesh was cleared after months of delay, due to seniority dynamics within his parent high court. It took nine months after the Collegium recommendation for the appointment to come through. 

In a Full Court reference held in his honour at the Himachal Pradesh High Court before his elevation to the Supreme Court in 2019, his colleagues praised him for his acumen and dexterity in handling complicated legal issues. They called him an outstanding judge in all respects, a “legalist and a pragmatist.” They admired him for his liberal attitude in dispensing justice to the underprivileged and vulnerable groups in the society. Sure enough, his admirers continue to see these attributes in him during his term as puisne judge in the Supreme Court, where he was elevated in May 2019. 

The Collegium Resolution recommending his appointment to the Supreme Court noted that he stood at number 11 in the all-India seniority list of High Court Judges. He was number 2 on the list of judges with Punjab & Haryana as their parent High Court, which the Collegium acknowledged as being the High Court for two large states and the “third largest” in the country. Apart from this regional factor, it’s clear from the resolution that the Collegium had also considered Justice Surya Kant’s “competence, conduct and integrity.” 

On assuming office as the 53rd Chief Justice of India today, CJI Surya Kant has achieved another distinction—he is the first from the state of Haryana to reach the office. He is expected to serve as CJI until his retirement, which is due on 9 February 2027.