Justice Surya Kant Takes Oath as 53rd Chief Justice of India

On Monday morning, President Droupadi Murmu swore in Justice Surya Kant as the 53rd Chief Justice of India (CJI), and thus, a long-distance journey of a village in Haryana to the top of the judicial hierarchy in the country was complete.

The swearing-in was attended by Vice-President CP Radhakrishnan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and some ministers of his cabinet.

During his term in the Supreme Court, Justice Kant has been linked to a number of notable constitutional decisions such as the abrogation of Article 370, the electoral roll reform in Bihar and the Pegasus spyware scandal.

Who is Justice Surya Kant?

Justice Kant was born on February 10, 1962 in the village of Petwar in the Narnaud district of Hisar and attended the local village schools, then went on to obtain a degree in law at Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak in 1984. In the same year, he started his legal practice at the Hisar district court and then made the shift to Chandigarh where he established a successful practice at the Punjab and Haryana High Court with focus on constitutional, service and civil law. Thirty years later he earned a first-class first master degree in law when he was a judge in Kurukshetra University.

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His career in the legal business was rapid. He was the youngest advocate general in Haryana who became one in 2000, became a senior advocate the next year, and made a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2004. Before becoming the Supreme Court justice in May 2019, he assumed the position as chief justice in the Himachal Pradesh High Court in October 2018.

Justice Kant has delivered over 300 judgments in the last six years, in the highest court of the land, including a number of high profile constitutional cases. He was on the bench that approved the abrogation of Article 370 and the bench that passed the sentence on Section 6A of the Citizenship Act and the bench that granted interim bail to the former Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal and confirmed the legality of his arrest. He was also in the bench most recently that issued its ruling in the presidential reference on fixing timelines of assenting state bills by governors and President.

As an executive chairman of National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) he initiated Veer Parivar Sahayata Yojana 2025 to offer free legal services to soldiers, veterans and their families.

New CJI's top priorities

In an interview with Hindustan Times a day before assuming office, the CJI-designate had discussed his judicial philosophy, his administration agenda, how patience of the farmer and empathy of the poet are the two ingredients of his approach to justice.

Justice Kant recognized this, as a challenge that was at the center of his time at the helm, in the acknowledgement of the fact that he was starting his tenure as the Supreme Court had close to 90,000 cases pending. “One of my foremost challenges is the arrears in the Supreme Court…My immediate focus is on the optimum utilisation of judicial force, ensuring that the court’s full strength is channelled towards reducing pendency,” he said.

“Many matters can’t be taken up before the high courts and lower courts because related issues are pending here. I will find those matters, ensure benches are constituted, and have them decided. I will also try to see the oldest matters,” said the judge, and that healthy habits of referring to lower courts before it is time must also be restored.

Justice Kant also had some words to say regarding the human aspect of judging, the institutional discipline that he looks to fortify, and priorities that he has established at once in the Supreme Court.

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Justice Kant in the interview looked back at how he grew up in a farm in Petwar village as one of the reasons why he became a judge with a temperament. “A farmer’s patience taught me that true growth requires time, care and resilience… Justice, like a harvest, cannot be forced; it must be cultivated with diligence and respect for the natural rhythm of due process,” he said.

He further included that empathy of a poet enables him to view past the facts in the paper and observe the human stories behind each controversy. This combination, he said, is what keeps his decisions not only sound in law, but in human nature as well. Through the law, he observed, the structure could be provided, yet the human element of judging was not only necessary, it was also inevitable.

According to Justice Kant, his judicial philosophy was termed as humanistic, and was based on the conviction that the law should eventually benefit people without breaching fairness and consistency. He thinks that judges should act in a way that is predominately neutral interpreters but always be aware of the larger social context.

As one of the former chief justices of the Himachal Pradesh High Court, a judge with a reputation of good administrative stewardship, Justice Kant added more emphasis on credibility of a court by stating that, collective discipline of a court is the key to credibility.

with the added that reform is a progression which he is going to proceed with.

He underlined the importance of streamlining case management, implementing technology to accelerate the disposals, and maintaining punctuality and readiness on all levels of judicial and administrative hierarchy. “Even small changes, such asprocedural guidelines, infrastructure upgrades, digital adoption, can have a transformative impact,” he said. He concluded that the two qualities of empathy and communication are essential in leadership.

In addition to pendency, Justice Kant had singled out mediation as one of the key pillars of his reform agenda. He pointed out that the judiciary should make government agencies embrace mediation more easily and put the pressure off the courts.

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