By Olav Albuquerque

THE 49th, 50th and 51st CJIs have all dramatic family histories which can enthuse a thriller writer like James Hadley Chase. CJI Uday Umesh Lalit’s father was a high court judge from Nagpur, who was forced to step down because he was not confirmed as a puisne judge by Indira Gandhi, who also superseded Justice Hans Raj Khanna as CJI. In poetic justice, UR Lalit’s son became the 49th CJI while Hans Raj Khanna’s nephew will take charge as the 51st CJI in 2024 after the next CJI Dhananjaya Chandrchud demits office.
Chandrachud is the son of the 16th CJI Yeshwantrao Chandrachud who had the longest tenure in India’s judicial history. Despite his long tenure as a CJI, the younger Chandrachud will not break his father’s record.
The younger Justice Chandrachud’s urbane, suave and boyish looks hide a razor intellect, because he was a consultee judge in the Supreme Court for putative appointees from the Bombay high court to the Supreme Court and also for lawyers being considered for elevation as judges of the Bombay high court. It was Justice Chandrachud with Justice AM Khanwilkar who opposed the confirmation of Justice Pushpa Ganediwalla as a Bombay high court judge.

FAMILY OF JURISTS
THEIR senior, the former CJI Sharad Arvind Bobde, from Nagpur, who like Chandrachud, comes from a family of jurists, ignored these judges’ misgivings about confirming Ganediwalla but had to recall his confirmation letter after she acquitted those charged with molesting minors with her infamous skin-to-skin contact verdicts — resulting in a scandal. Justices Khanwilkar and Chandrachud were only discharging their duties when they opposed her confirmation just as they concurred in the elevation of Justice Bhushan Ramkrishna Gavai to the Supreme Court who is set to become the 52nd CJI after Justice Sanjiv Khanna demits office in 2025.
Laypersons do not realize that when a two-judge bench or a three-judge bench assembles, the junior most judge is kept with the chief justice or the senior most judge who will, sooner or later, be asked to evaluate the junior judge’s orders and acumen — so that he will be made a puisne (permanent) judge or retained as an additional judge before quitting the judiciary.
After elevation to the Supreme Court, former chief justice Dipankar Datta will be asked to opine if certain senior judges of the Calcutta and Bombay high courts are fit for elevation to the Supreme Court. This evaluation to be an unfair practice because unless all the judgments and orders of a particular judge are compiled, consultee judges have only hazy perceptions of their brother judges who sat with them on a two-judge bench.
Of course, if they give these junior judges the task of writing judgments, their evaluation will be more objective. But there have been innumerable cases where deserving judges have been overlooked to the Supreme Court and mediocre judges elevated because of their rapport with the consultee judges.
MORE sinister is the allegation made by former Justice Jasti Chelameshwar, who alleged a few judges of the collegium circulated lists of those whom they wanted elevated, on a tacit quid pro quo basis. Justice Chelameshwar boycotted those old collegium meetings because of their opacity. He would have been a CJI were it not for a mischance of him being sworn in a few minutes after Justice Dipak Misra.
Justice Chandrachud has been a witness to the dramatic press conference held by the three senior most judges in January 2018 and other dramatic episodes in the Supreme Court. A hard-core diplomat, he kept a low profile. Unlike the former CJI Dipak Misra, CJI Chandrachud will never be accused of manipulating benches as a master of the roster, to ensure sensitive cases of the government will be allotted to judges who will deliver what the government wants them to deliver.

MASTER-OF-THE-ROSTER
WHETHER he streamlines the master-of-the-roster system to ensure that such alleged manipulations never take place in future remains to be seen. In any case, he will be assisted by Justice KM Joseph whose elevation to the Supreme Court was delayed by the government because they did not like him. Both Justices Chandrachud and Joseph did not allow CJI Uday Umesh Lalit to nominate judges to the Supreme Court by way of circulating a memorandum rather than have a face-to-face discussion less than one month to him demitting office. The reason put out was Justice Chandrachud was busy with judicial work till 9 pm on the day the collegium headed by CJI Lalit was supposed to meet. But there may be more to than this version.
After all, it is well known that Justice Lalit’s father had his confirmation as a high court judge from Nagpur blocked by Indira Gandhi, because of the latter’s perceived closeness to the RSS and the fact that he granted bail to two persons accused of raping a minor. But ideologies change with changing governments which change the norms for elevating judges. Former CJI Ranjan Gogoi admitted the government does have the final say in who will be elevated to the Supreme Court and the high courts.
It was because Justice Jasti Chelameshwar was adamant on iterating Justice Joseph’s name a second time that the government had no option but to elevate him to the Supreme Court by first delaying his seniority. But a stalwart like Justice Akil Kureshi was not so lucky. Like Justice Joseph, the government had a “negative perception” of his judicial orders which was why CJI Ranjan Gogoi chose to succumb to the government diktat rather than fight for a judge who is known to be upright.
The CJI with the shortest tenure of 17 days in 1991, Kamal Narain Singh, died last month aged 95 years. The next CJI Chandrachud will decide who will succeed him as the CJI in decades yet to come who in turn will decide who will succeed them in office. This is why we need rebel judges like Jasti Chelameshwar who do not look forward to post-retirement sinecures from the government like CJI Ranjan Gogoi but are ready to deliver justice for the common man.
Justice is not an empty prefix before the names of those who deliver it but an embodiment of the divine.