Government seeks Lalit’s recommendation on next and 50th Chief Justice of India

The Ministry of Law and Justice on October 7, 2022 sought Chief Justice of India U.U. Lalit’s recommendation for appointment of his successor.

“As per the MoP [Memorandum of Procedure] on appointment of Chief Justice of India and Supreme Court Judges, today the Hon’ble Minister of Law and Justice sent a letter to the Hon’ble Chief Justice of India for sending his recommendations for appointment of his successor,” the Ministry tweeted.

The letter kick-starts the appointment process for the 50th Chief Justice of India.

Justice D.Y. Chandrachud is next in line to be Chief Justice of India in accordance with the seniority norm.

The process of appointment, according to the ‘Memorandum of Procedure of Appointment of Supreme Court Judges’, begins with the Union Law Minister seeking the recommendation of the outgoing CJI about the next appointment.

The Minister has to seek the CJI’s recommendation “at the appropriate time”. The Memorandum does not elaborate or specify a timeline.

Usually the Law Minister sends his request and the outgoing CJI makes his recommendation with a month to spare before his retirement. Chief Justice Lalit is set to retire on November 8.

Chief Justice Lalit has hardly 15 working days left before November 8, which is a holiday. His last working day would effectively be November 7. The Diwali holidays would also intervene between October 24 to October 29.

The court is scheduled to re-open on October 10 after the ongoing Dussehra holidays.

The appointment process for the next Chief Justice of India has begun at a time when four names are under consideration of the collegium for appointment as Supreme Court judges. Usually, no new recommendations for judicial appointments are made when the appointment process for the next CJI is on.

A crucial collegium meeting scheduled on September 30 to finalise the four names could not be held owing to the fact that one of the collegium judges had a heavy board of cases and sat till 9.15 p.m.

Chief Justice Lalit had written to the collegium members to make the recommendation of the four names through circulation, but two of the collegium judges had objected, saying the issue had to be deliberated in person and not through circulation.

The fate of the four recommendations now lies in limbo.

The Lalit Collegium had however, at an earlier date, successfully recommended Bombay High Court Chief Justice Dipankar Datta as Supreme Court judge. This file is pending with the government.

The Supreme Court has currently five judicial vacancies. The next retirement is that of Justice Hemant Gupta on October 16.