Chief Justice NV Ramana recommends UU Lalit as his successor
If appointed, Justice Lalit will have a short tenure as the country’s top-most judge as he is due to retire on November 8.
Chief Justice of India NV Ramana on Thursday recommended the name of Justice Uday Umesh Lalit as his successor, Bar and Bench reported.
Justice Lalit is the second senior-most judge in the Supreme Court after Ramana. If appointed, Justice Lalit would be the 49th chief justice of India.
Ramana will retire on August 26. Union Law Minister Kiren Rijiju had on Wednesday asked Ramana to name his successor.
Chief Justice of India NV Ramana today recommends Justice UU Lalit's name as his successor. Justice Lalit to become the 49th CJI. Chief Justice Ramana is retiring this month. pic.twitter.com/AfJJc8652V
— ANI (@ANI) August 4, 2022
Justice Lalit will have a short tenure as the chief justice because he is due to retire on November 8. After him, Justice DY Chandrachud is in line to take over as the country’s top-most judge. If he becomes the chief justice, he will have a long tenure of about two years.
Justice Lalit was appointed as a Supreme Court judge on August 13, 2014, according to Live Law. Earlier, he was a senior advocate at the Supreme Court.
On August 22, 2017, the judge was part of a majority opinion in the Supreme Court that struck down the practice of triple talaq and declared it unconstitutional. The five-member bench was divided 3-2 on the matter and the majority opinion prevailed.
Justice Lalit also headed a Supreme Court bench that struck down a widely-criticised ruling of the Bombay High Court in a case related to Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act on November 18. The Nagpur bench of the High Court had held that groping a minor’s breast without removing her clothes did not fall into the category of sexual assault defined under Section 7 of the POCSO Act.
In January 2019, the judge recused himself from hearing the Ram Janmabhoomi-Babri Masjid case, as he had previously represented former Uttar Pradesh chief minister Kalyan Singh in a contempt case about the demolition of the mosque.
On November 9, 2019, the Supreme Court had ruled that the disputed land in Ayodhya would be handed over to a government-run trust for the construction of a Ram temple. The court said that the demolition of Babri Masjid in 1992 was “an egregious violation of the rule of law” and directed the government to acquire an alternative plot of land to build a mosque.