P.V. Sanjay Kumar

Early Life and Education

Justice P.V. Sanjay Kumar was born in Hyderabad on 14 August 1963. He is the son of Senior Advocate P. Ramachandra Reddy who served as the Advocate General of Andhra Pradesh from 1969 to 1982. 

He graduated with a degree in law from Delhi University in 1988 and enrolled as a member of the Bar Council of Andhra Pradesh the same year. Prior to this, he received his degree in Commerce from Nizam College, Hyderabad. 

Career as an Advocate

After initially working in his fathers offices, Justice Kumar served as a government pleader in the Andhra Pradesh High Court for three years from 2000 to 2003. 

Career as a Judge

On 8 August 2008, Justice Kumar was elevated as an additional Judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court. A year and a half later, he was appointed as a permanent judge on 20 January 2010. 

On 1 January 2019, he was sworn in as a Judge of the new Telangana High Court.. He was then transferred to the Punjab & Haryana High Court in October 2019. At that time, he was the second-most senior judge in Telangana.

The Telangana Advocates Association protested and condemned the transfer as he was on track to become Chief Justice of the Telangana High Court. However, the protests were unsuccessful and Justice Kumar served at the Punjab & Haryana High Court for two years until he was elevated as Chief Justice of Manipur High Court on 14 February  2021.

On 4 February 2023, Justice Kumar was appointed as Judge of the Supreme Court  under the Collegium led by former Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud. He assumed office with four other judges on 6 February 2023. 

Justice Kumar will retire on 13 August 2028 after a tenure of five and a half years.

Figure 1 shows that Justice Kumar has authored 14 judgements, and has been a part of 157 benches so far. 

Figure 2 shows that Justice Kumar has mainly authored judgements in Criminal Matters (44%). This is followed by Education (6%), Excise (6%), Family (6%), and Insurance (6%) matters.

Notable Judgements

In Zainab Abdul Qayyum Choudhary v Chembur Trombay Education Society (2024), a Division Bench of Chief Justice Sanjiv Khanna and Justice Kumar partly stayed a clause in a circular which banned students from wearing burqa, hijab or niqab at the N.G. Acharya and D.K. Marathe College in Mumbai. 

In Karikho Kri v Nuney Tayang (2023), Justice Kumar held that electoral candidates have the right to privacy in matters which are irrelevant to their candidate for public office.  He observed that candidates need not declare every moveable property that they own unless it constitutes a sizable asset in itself or reflects upon their candidature. “Though it has been strenuously contended before us that the voter’s ‘right to know’ is absolute and a candidate contesting the election must be forthright about all his particulars, we are not inclined to accept the blanket proposition that a candidate is required to lay his life out threadbare for examination by the electorate,” he wrote. 

In December 2024, Justice Kumar was part of the bench which directed the Manipur government to provide details on properties destroyed, looted or encroached upon in the state since the ethnic conflict began between the Meitei and Kuki-zo communities. The bench also directed a separate report to address the rehabilitative measures undertaken in Manipur. In the same month, he was also part of a Special bench that stayed the registration of suits seeking surveys of places of worship in India in the wake of fatal violence in Sambhal.