All Eyes On CJI Bhushan Ramakrishna Gavai During His Crucial Six-Month Tenure

The 52nd CJI, Bhushan Ramakrishna Gavai, is the first Buddhist to head the judicial family in the country. His father, G.S. Gavai, who headed the Gavai faction of the Republican Party of India, embraced Buddhism in the presence of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.

CJI Gavai has authored 300 judgements, including landmark rulings on constitutional issues, liberty, and the government’s “bulldozer justice”. where the government used bulldozers to demolish the homes of those accused of serious crimes, especially those from certain minority groups.

President Droupadi Murmu, who comes from the backward Santhal tribe in Jharkhand, administered the oath of office to CJI Gavai in chaste Hindi, while Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who comes from the OBC group, looked on unsmilingly. The three top constitutional posts of President, Prime Minister, and CJI are now occupied by dignitaries who do not come from privileged families.

Among those present was Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, who has attacked the judiciary for allegedly overstepping its lakshman rekha by formulating the basic structure doctrine. He called the striking down of the NJAC Act a “severe compromise” of parliamentary sovereignty and disregard of the “mandate of the people”.

He, like the former president Ram Nath Kovind, is a designated senior advocate. The Rajasthan High Court designated him a senior advocate, but his criticism of the judiciary appears to have curtailed its propensity to do justice by declaring the law of the land, which it has the authority to do. As the Vice President, Dhankhar ranks second in the Table of Precedence (ToP) above the CJI, who ranks at number six.

The Prime Minister ranks at number three in the ToP. This is why the Vice President ought to be careful while opining on law and the judiciary in public, because his utterances are publicised on national television as he discharges judicial functions as the chairman of the Rajya Sabha, which is the highest law-making authority in the country.

Modi may not be as close to CJI Gavai as he was with the 50th CJI, Dhananjay Chandrachud, who wore a crisp saffron kurta while greeting the Prime Minister during a Ganesh puja on September 11, 2024. The 50th CJI and the 52nd CJI have contrasting dispositions, with the former being suave, urbane, and media-friendly, while the latter is rustic, down-to-earth, and blunt.

CJI Gavai’s tenure of slightly over six months will test his mettle because the allegedly corrupt judge, Yashwant Varma, repatriated to his parent high court of Allahabad, before he was indicted by the three-judge committee, has refused to resign. He has the ignominious distinction of the Allahabad High Court Bar Association opposing his repatriation, saying the “Allahabad High Court is not a dumping ground for corrupt judges.”

The only way out seems to be to impeach Justice Varma because the three-member committee of judges has indicted him. Whether CJI Gavai will convince Justice Varma to save the image of the judiciary by resigning or if he will just bide his time until he retires on November 23 remains to be seen.

Interestingly, in 2017, Justice Gavai clarified there was “nothing suspicious” about the death of Judge B.H. Loya, who was hearing a very sensitive case about the alleged fake encounter of gangster Sohrabuddin Shaikh in which the home minister was implicated. Justice Gavai, who was then a judge of the Bombay High Court, clarified that Judge Loya went out during the wedding reception of the daughter of a colleague to “have a paan” and was chatting with his colleagues till late. “There was nothing suspicious about his death,” he clarified.

Interestingly, this was one of the reasons for four senior-most sitting judges of the Supreme Court to hold the nation’s first-ever press conference, indirectly accusing the then CJI, Deepak Misra, of allotting sensitive cases against the government to certain judges who were known to be, allegedly, leaning towards the executive.

At the ceremony, CJI Gavai bent down to reverentially touch the feet of his aged mother soon after the swearing-in. He took the oath in chaste Hindi, over which his fluency cannot be questioned because he studied in a vernacular medium municipal school in Amravati, according to his mother. Justice Gavai’s brother is a doctor.

Interestingly, six out of the 51 CJIs that India has had to date have come from families with their fathers or uncles as judges. The number of judges with close family relations to each other, among all the 279 Supreme Court judges India has had so far, is much larger.

There have been 16 such pairs. On the other hand, slightly more than one-third of India’s Supreme Court judges have been first-generation lawyers like the 48^th CJI N.V. Ramanna, who got into a controversy before and after he demitted office. Eleven pairs have served as CJIs, which will increase to 12 (6 pairs) when Justice B.V. Nagarathna, who is in line to become the CJI in 2027, takes office. She is the daughter of the 19^th CJI Venkataramiah from the Karnataka High Court, just as the 50th CJI Dhananjaya Chandrachud was the son of the 16th CJI Yeshwant Chandrachud.

The father-son, uncle-nephew, father-in-law-son-in-law, grandfather-grandson, or father-daughter pairs have culminated in demands that the collegium system for appointing judges has to be replaced by a law allowing the government to have a say in who will be sworn in as a High Court and a Supreme Court judge. This again will ignite a controversy over the fact that the government will pick and choose only those lawyers who prove their loyalty to the ruling party.

While family relations between Supreme Court judges are an obvious case of the judiciary being a closed club, the network effects behind the appointments of India’s Supreme Court judges could be much larger. Less than a third of India’s Supreme Court judges (104 of 279) were first-generation practitioners of the legal profession.

To be sure, the ratio is slightly higher for CJIs (17 of 51). Given the fact that a next-generation lawyer often inherits the practice and networks of the previous one, having a legal background is considered a huge advantage in the legal profession.

Olav Albuquerque holds a PhD in law and is a senior journalist and advocate at the Bombay High Court.

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