Justice Ranjan Gogoi appointed next CJI by President Ram Nath Kovind; to assume office on 3 October

On Thursday, President Ram Nath Kovind appointed Justice Ranjan Gogoi as the next Chief Justice of India. Gogoi will assume the office on 3 October, a day after the retirement of Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra. On 4 September, Justice Misra sent a letter to the Centre recommending Justice Ranjan Gogoi as his successor. The CJI wrote to the Ministry of Law and Justice endorsing Gogoi, the most senior judge, as the next CJI. According to the Supreme Court’s official wesbsite, Gogoi joined the Bar in 1978. He mostly practised in the Guhawati High Court and was appointed as a Permanent Judge of the same high court on 28 February, 2001. [caption id=“attachment_4885481” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] File photo of Justice Ranjan Gogoi. PTI[/caption] Later, he was transferred to the Punjab and Haryana High Court on 9 September, 2010 and was then appointed Chief Justice on 12 February, 2011. On 23 April, 2012, Gogoi became a judge of the Supreme Court . On 12 January, 2018, Justice Gogoi — along with justices J Chelameswar (since retired), MB Lokur and Kurian Joseph — called a press conference and said the situation in the apex court was “not in order” and many “less than desirable” things had taken place. Unless this institution is preserved, “democracy will not survive in this country,” the four judges had said. A day later, Gogoi had said that “there is no crisis” in the Supreme Court. On 13 July, 2018, Justice Gogoi said that a “revolution, not reform” is needed to keep the institution of judiciary serviceable for the people, asserting that the judiciary would have to be more “pro-active” and on the “front foot”. He had said that “independent judges and noisy journalists are democracy’s first line of defence… reports of the death of democracy are greatly exaggerated. But the least bad system of government ever devised, is in trouble. It needs defenders.”