New Delhi: Less than a week after Union law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal wrote to him, requesting him to recommend the name of his successor, Chief Justice of India (CJI) B.R. Gavai today (October 27) recommended the name of senior-most Supreme Court Judge Surya Kant as his successor.

As per the memorandum of procedure, the document that deals with the procedure for appointment of members of the higher judiciary, including the CJI, the outgoing CJI has to recommend the name of his successor in writing to the government about one month before demitting office.

Justice Surya Kant will be the 53rd CJI and will be in office from November 24 to February 9, 2027. 

As judge of the top court, he was part of several important and politically-sensitive cases. He was part of the bench that ordered that the British-era sedition law be kept in abeyance and directed that no new FIRs be registered under it until a government review.

Born in a village in Haryana’s Hisar district, Justice Surya Kant was appointed judge of the Punjab and Haryana high court in 2024 and remained there till his appointment as the chief justice of the high court of Himachal Pradesh in October 2018.

Prior to his appointment as judge of the high court, he was advocate general, Haryana, in the government of Om Prakash Chautala.

He recently hit headlines for pushing a hesitant Election Commission of India (ECI) to disclose details of 65 lakh voters of Bihar, who had been excluded from the electoral rolls following the Special Intensive Revision (SIR). The case came before his bench after a bunch of petitions alleged large-scale mass deletions of voters, lack of transparency and non-disclosure of such data on the website of the ECI.

It was also a bench headed by him that directed that at least one-third seats in bar associations, including the Supreme Court Bar Association, be reserved for women.

He was also part of the bench that, while dealing with the issue of grant of bail to fact-checker Mohammed Zubair after multiple FIRs were lodged against him for offenses ranging from promoting enmity between religious groups to outraging religious sentiments, said, “A blanket order directing the petitioner to not express his opinion – an opinion he is rightfully entitled to hold as an active, participating citizen – would be disproportionate to the purpose of imposing conditions on bail.”

The bench noted that such imposition of such a condition would amount to a gag order and that “gag orders have a chilling effect on the freedom of speech”.

In another matter, this one dealing with BJP leader Nupur Sharma, whose remarks about Prophet Muhammad had sparked widespread protests, the bench headed by Justice Surya Kant said public figures should "exercise caution and restraint" in their statements to avoid communal discord.

Earlier this May, a bench led by Justice Surya Kant granted interim bail to Ashoka University professor Ali Khan Mahmudabad subject to stringent rules and also formed a special investigation team (SIT) to probe his two anti-war social media posts. In an extraordinary move, the bench had also said that if the students and professors, ostensibly of Ashoka University, “dare to do anything, we will not accept this, if they try to join hands etc, we know how to deal with these people, they are within our jurisdiction.”

Deprecating the the United Nations High Commission for Refugees (UNHCR) for issuing refugee cards to immigrants in India, Justice Surya Kant recently remarked that “they have opened a showroom here and are issuing certificates.” He made this observation while hearing the petition of a man from Sudan, who has been residing in India since 2013. He has two children, including a 40-day old infant, and wife – all of whom have been issued refugee cards by the UN agency. He was seeking asylum in Australia and approached the Supreme Court for interim protection. Notably, Justice Surya Kant dismissed the plea stating that India has not ratified the concerned international treaty/convention with respect to refugee rights.

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