Familial, social, and political factors shaped the journey of former Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud within the Indian judiciary.
His father, Justice Yeshwant Chandrachud, is remembered as the longest-serving Chief Justice of India. As a prominent figure in law, the senior Chandrachud’s legacy created opportunities and opened many doors to young Dhananjay Chandrachud. He completed his Master of Laws on an Inlaks scholarship and later went on to do his Doctor of Juridical Science from Harvard University.
At a relatively young age he achieved key career milestones, such as his appointment as an additional solicitor general and as a high-court judge at the age 40. His early promotion was unusual, as the judicial system typically reserves such positions for candidates in their late forties. Despite objections due to his age, his father and influential mentors like Soli Sorabjee and Ram Jethmalani had advocated strongly for his elevation.
In many ways, he was treated by everyone as someone who is destined to inherit his father’s legacy. However, his tenure does not reflect any enduring legacy of his own. It was marked by superficial makeovers and publicity stunts as an administrator. A lot has already been said about his judicial legacy, however we shall analyse his administrative legacy here.
Pendency and the common litigant
His image of being a tech-savvy judge did not translate to a reduction of pendency. When Chandrachud took over as CJI in November 2022, there were 69,781 cases pending in the Supreme Court. As of October 29, 2024, there were 82,668 cases pending. Considering COVID-19 was long gone at the time of his assuming the office, it can clearly be stated that pendency cannot be attributed to the pandemic. In fact, filings have nearly doubled since Chandrachud took over. The perception of Chandrachud being a modern and reform-driven judge seems to have faltered against the reality of mounting delays in the judicial process.
Similarly, data from National Judicial Grid indicates that out of 4.5 crores pending before the sub-ordinate judiciary, 62.05% is more than one-year-old and out of 60.57 lakhs cases pending before the high courts, 73.44% are more than a year old. The book ‘50th Chief Justice of India’, published by Centre for Research and Policy, Supreme Court of India, paints a glowing picture of Chandrachud’s tenure, landmark judgements and his efforts to modernise the judiciary. While the book celebrates his legacy as the 50th CJI, but conveniently hides these figures and highlights only cumulative disposals.
In his tenure he is said to have initiated the following changes in court:
- introduction of transcription software for constitution benches,
- WhatsApp notification service for advocates-on-record,
- improvement of Fast and Secured Transmission of Electronic Records or FASTER system,
- creation of a war room in registry,
- release of new website for the Supreme Court, etc.
No doubt these little changes are welcome, however in a situation where 1/5th of the court complexes do not have basic infrastructure such as toilets, the radio silence on them clearly indicates a serious lack of interest for the woes of the common litigant and a myopic outlook.
During his tenure, there was no streamlining of filing or listing policies. Further, many members of the bar and post-holders of the Supreme Court Advocates-on-Record Association have continuously complained about the registry being inefficient, with new recruits not having the sufficient legal background to understand the nature of filings.
Benches
Additionally, there has been a new trend of not allowing lawyers to circulate letters of adjournment, which has become a cause of concern for certain senior practitioners. Such a change was introduced by going against the existing old norms of the court. We saw bail pleas of Mahesh Raut, Umar Khalid, Palaniswamy, Chandrababu Naidu, Senthil Balaji, and D.K. Shivkumar as instanceswhich portrayed the then CJI’s lack of adherence to rules of allocation.
Even among his brethren judges, collegiality was clearly missing. It has been revealed that profiles of advocates were not completely disclosed to judges for senior designation, rather judges were called to view pictures of advocates to be designated on a large screen. This is said to have created friction between Chandrachud and his colleagues, leading to a verbal spat over the impropriety in the selection process. Moreover, there have been repeated instances of judges taking the registry to task over misallocation of cases under his regime.
Collegium
His collegium also has not met the expectation of people. He was able to appoint only 124 number of judges to various high courts when the vacancy stands at over 320. His rhetoric of women empowerment did not reflect in action as he was not able to appoint a single women out of the 17 appointments he made to the Supreme Court. Justification on lack of availability of senior women judges does not hold water as many a time seniority has been overlooked to appoint a Supreme Court judge. There was no representation from the Sikh community. Certain regions like Odisha, Jammu and Jharkhand did not see representation.
Critical appointments of senior advocate Saurabh Kirpal, R. John Sathayan, Amitesh Banerjee and Sakhya Sen were not pushed and he allowed government objections to prevail. Grave errors were committed in not elevating talented judges like S. Murlidhar, while at the same time aspersions were cast on appointments of the likes of Justice Victoria Gowri.
More importantly, the collegium headed by CJI Chandrachud transferred around 20 high court judges across the country. Considering the opaque nature of these transfers whether any norms are followed or not is left for speculation. It has come to light that one of the transferred judges, who has a specially-abled child and a spouse who is undergoing treatment for cancer, had allegedly requested to continue in the same court. His representation was allegedly denied stating that it lacks merit. A similar response was given to a judge who requested to be transferred so as to be able to care for his seriously ill wife at the place of treatment.
The past year saw transfer of judges from the southern states to northern states, and vice-versa. It is a known fact that proceedings in the high court, other than the Chief Justice’s court, often take place in colloquial languages. How the judges are expected to do their judicial work to their full capacity is not known. In all the transfers orders, it is mentioned that the transfers were affected for better administration. However, the logic betrays the same.
His relations with the bar has also been tumultuous. As recent as three days before he left office, both the Supreme Court Bar association as well as the association for advocates-on-record passed a resolution boycotting the inauguration ceremony. His regime was marked with unilateral decisions, without consideration of inputs from members of the bar. Policies such as induction of a new emblem, a new flag, a modified Lady Justice without the blindfold and sword of implementation, modifications of the Supreme Court building and planning of work stations have not gone well with the members of the bar.
A fraught judicial legacy too
Coming to his judicial legacy, his tenure was marked by the dismissal of a case alleging suspicion in Justice Loya’s death, extension of the tenure for Jay Shah as BCCI Secretary, siding with BJP allies in Shiv Sena politics by allowing the cause to be rendered infructuous, the Hindenburg debacle, providing new methods to increase power of the Union government in Delhi, upholding the Union government’s Article 370 move, etc. The list continues and much has been written about it. However, the case which stands out is the opening of the review of an old judgment which struck down retrospective application of Benami Transaction Act, without allowing proper chance for parties to argue.
Further, the judgment delivered by a coordinate bench comprising Justice Krishna Murari and Justice C.T. Ravi Kumar in the case of Ritu Chhabaria, wherein it was held that incomplete charge sheets cannot be used a tool by investigating agencies to scuttle the right of default bail, was stayed by another coordinate bench headed by CJI Chandrachud on mere mentioning by the Solicitor General of India. This was done neither by way of a review, nor by way of a curative. Never before had a coordinate bench of the Supreme Court stayed another judgment of a coordinate bench, that too by way of an unknown jurisprudence of a “recall application”, which essentially gave the bench of the CJI appellate powers over other coordinate benches of the Supreme Court.
The lowest point of his Chief Justiceship came when two judges publicly scorned his high handedness in dealing with his brother judges. First, Justice B.V. Nagarathna castigated him for calling Justice Krishna Iyer’s jurisprudence a disservice for India. Her opinion on the draft judgment ultimately led the CJI to omit such observations. Second, Justice Dipankar Dutta called out his tactics of not allowing sufficient time for judges to deliberate on draft judgments.
The CJI’s tenure has been largely about media hype, bookish jurisprudence, judicial evasion and an overall disinterest in manning the judiciary in India.
It is beyond doubt that he left the system more divided, than what he had inherited.
Sughosh Subramanyam is a BA LLM from the University of Cambridge.