Sanjiv Khanna, CJI
will have a short tenure of six months as CJI
Due to retire on 13 May 2025
India’s 51st Chief Justice of India will see a judge from the Delhi High Court take over the highest post in the Indian judiciary after nearly two decades.
The last judge from this high court (HC) who made it to the CJI’s post was Justice Y. K. Sabharwal, who demitted office in 2006
Justice Sanjiv Khanna’s out-of-turn elevation to the Supreme Court in January 2019 had raised many eyebrows. \
Ranked 33 in the all-India seniority list of HC judges, Khanna not just superseded many judges senior to him in the country, but even his three senior colleagues from his parent High Court of Delhi.
With this he made it to the coveted list of six judges who have been promoted directly from their parent high court.
in his autobiography, former CJI Gogoi defended Justice Sanjiv Khanna’s recommendation, while accepting the new collegium reviewed the December 2018 resolution.
This, he said, was done to get a clear line of succession after the retirement of CJI Chandrachud as most of the judges appointed to the SC by then were due to retire before Chandrachud’s last day in office.
his uncle Justice H. R. Khanna made headlines by resigning from the Supreme Court. Nine months before that, he stood out for authoring a dissenting verdict in the ADM Jabalpur vs Shivkant Shukla case during the Emergency in 1976.While his four colleagues on the bench upheld Indira Gandhi’s Emergency proclamation that curtailed Indian citizens’ fundamental rights, Justice H. R. Khanna declared the move as unconstitutional and against the rule of law. The judge paid a price. The Congress government then led by Indira Gandhi declared Justice M. H. Beg as the next CJI, while superseding Justice H. R. Khanna.
his father who influenced him to join the legal profession. Justice D. R. Khanna served as a judge of the Delhi High Court till 1985
Justice Khanna’s grandfather was well known in Amritsar during the pre-Partition era. A municipal councillor, Sarv Dayal Khanna was selected as the representative of the citizens of Amritsar for being associated with a committee constituted by the Indian National Congress in the aftermath of the Jallianwala Bagh massacre.
“People in India had more confidence in this committee than in the Hunter Commission, which had been appointed by the British government for this purpose,” noted Justice H. R. Khanna in his autobiography, Neither Roses Nor Thorns. Sarv Dayal Khanna did a good bit of recording of evidence before this committee that included C. R. Das and Moti Lal Nehru.
First judgement in Delhi High Court The judgment was on reservation for Scheduled Castes in Delhi, given that the capital does not have a status of full statehood.
his famous opinion upholding the Centre’s 2009 notification that banned smoking on screen. He also agreed with the notification’s mandate to display a disclaimer against smoking as long as it does not disturb the continuity of the film or documentary or a serial.
2018, Justice Khanna headed the HC bench that quashed then President Ram Nath Kovind’s notification disqualifying 20 Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) MLAs. This notification was issued subsequent to a recommendation of the Election Commission of India (ECI) in the wake of the charge that they were holding office of profit as parliamentary secretaries
He was one of the members of the constitution benches that upheld the abrogation of Article 370 and set aside the electoral bonds scheme respectively.
