By Sanjeev Kumar Patro
Bhubaneswar: The President of India has appointed seniormost Judge Justice Sanjiv Khanna as the 51st Chief Justice of Supreme Court of India. 64 –year old Khanna will retire on May 13, 2025. He will remain in office for nearly 7 months. Justice Khanna had assumed office in Supreme Court on Jan 18, 2019.
Graduated from Campus Law Centre, Delhi University, he enrolled in the Bar Council of Delhi in 1983. Justice Khanna practised taxation, arbitration, commercial law, environmental law, medical negligence law and company law in the Delhi High Court. He represented Delhi Government as an Additional Public Prosecutor in criminal law matters. He was also a Senior Standing Counsel for the Income Tax Department of Delhi for about seven years. In 2004, he was appointed as Delhi’s Standing Counsel for civil law matters at the Delhi High Court.
CAREER AS JUDGE
25 JUNE 2005: Appointed as an Additional Judge of the Delhi High Court.
20FEBRUARY 2006: Sanjiv Khanna became permanent judge.
18 JANUARY 2019: Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi led collegiums elevated Justice Khanna to Supreme Court of India.
JUDGEMENTS AUTHORED BY SANJIV KHANNA
After assuming office in Supreme Court, here is a look at the number of judgments Justice Khanna has authored during the last 6 years.
- 2019: 97 judgments
- 2020: 35 judgments
- 2021: 16 judgments
- 2021: 99 as part of Bench
- 2022: 27 judgments
- 2022: 111 as part of Bench
- 2023: 17 judgments
- 2023: 58 as part of Bench
- 2024: 15 judgments
- 2024: 56 as part of Bench
IMPORTANT JUDGMENTS BY SANJIV KHANNA
The above data shows Justice Sanjiv Khanna has authored 117 judgments himself, and had been a part of 456 benches as on date.
Also, a glance at the judgments authored by Justice Sanjiv Khanna shows even as he had practiced in arbitration, his authored judgments on cases pertaining to Arbitration is mere 6%. Profiling of judgments authored shows Criminal cases constitute 24%, Civil 10%, Constitution 8% and others 52%.
Here is a list of some of his significant judgments this year and last year.
- VVPAT JUDGEMENT: Heading a Division Bench that heard the case of Association for Democratic Reforms Vs Election Commission of India this year, Justice Khanna led Bench unanimously rejected ADR’s plea seeking 100 percent VVPAT verification of votes cast on Electronic Voting Machines. Authoring, Justice Khanna wrote that he wished to “put on record all safeguards adopted by the ECI to ensure free and fair elections”. While putting down EVM features, he stated the current system “ensures quick, error-free and mischief-free vote counting.”
- FAMOUS ELECTORAL BOND CASE: Justice Khanna was part of a five-judge Bench headed by then CJI DY Chandrachud. The Bench earlier this year had declared the Electoral Bond Scheme unconstitutional.
- Writing his concurring opinion, Justice Khanna wrote the right to privacy of donors does not arise if a donation is made through a banking channel. Their identity is “asymmetrically known to the person and the officers of the bank from where the Bond is purchased.”
- At the same time he held that retribution, victimisation, and retaliation against donors are wrongs but they cannot be a justification for the scheme which violates voters' collective right to information.
- ARTICLE 370 CASE: The abrogation of Article 370 from Jammu and Kashmir by Narendra Modi government was the most debated and hot topic in year 2019. Scores of PIL filed in topmost court. In 2023 bcame the judgement that upheld the constitutional validity of abrogation of Art 370. Bench was headed by CJI Chandrachud. But Justice Khanna authored a concurring opinion. He authored that Article 370 of the Constitution of India was a feature of asymmetric federalism, not an indication of sovereignty, and that its abrogation does not negate the federal structure.
- DIVORCE CASE: Delivering ruling on Shilpa Sailesh Vs Varun Sreenivasan case in year 2023, Justice Khanna authored the majority opinion that held Supreme Court has the power to directly grant divorce under Article 142 of the Constitution. Justice Khanna in his judgment reasoned, “SC can grant a divorce under the grounds of ‘irretrievable breakdown of marriage.”
- RIGHT TO INFORMATION JUDGMENT: This case pertained to bringing Office of Chief Justice of Indian under the purview of RTI Act.
- Authoring the majority opinion, Justice Khanna in CPIO, Supreme Court V Subhash Chandra wrote that judicial independence does not necessarily oppose the right to information. Whether or not the Office of Chief Justice should fulfil RTI requests must be decided on a case-by-case basis. The judgment concluded that the Court’s Chief Public Information Officer (CPIO) must decide if the disclosure is in the larger public interest by weighing it against the right to privacy of judges.
IMPORTANT CASES WHERE JUDGMENT PENDING
- Criminilaistion of Triple Talaq Case.
- Aligarh Muslim University Minority Status Case
- State-wise grant of Minority status case
- Reservation in Promotion
- Challenges to Appointment of Election Commissioners Act 2023
