Justice Sanjiv Khanna Takes Oath As India’s 51st Chief Justice After DY Chandrachud’s Retirement

Justice Sanjiv Khanna will take oath as the 51st Chief Justice of India today at the Rashtrapati Bhavan. He succeeds the outgoing Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, who will retire on Sunday after a glorious tenure.

President Droupadi Murmu will administer the oath at 10 a.m. on 11 November 2024. Justice Khanna, 64, is likely to finish a six-month tenure as Chief Justice, ending May 13, 2025.

A first-generation lawyer and scion of a distinguished legal family, Justice Sanjiv Khanna is the son of former judge of the Delhi High Court, Justice Dev Raj Khanna, and nephew of the great former Supreme Court judge H.R. Khanna. After serving at the Delhi Bar Council as an advocate in 1983, he was elevated as a permanent judge of the Delhi High Court in 2005 and then as a judge of the Supreme Court in 2019.

Being an officer with immense experience in diversified legal fields, Justice Khanna has made salient contributions to constitutional law, taxation arbitration, commercial law, and environmental law. He was also the senior standing counsel for the Income Tax Department representing the National Capital Territory of Delhi.

He has been part of many landmark judgments. He has been a stout defender of the sanctity of EVMs and played a significant role in scrapping Article 370 giving special status to Jammu and Kashmir. He headed a bench declaring the electoral bonds scheme unconstitutional, pushing the importance of transparency in political funding. He was also one of the bench members that gave Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal interim bail during the 2019 Lok Sabha election to be able to campaign.

It was on the very last working day that Chief Justice DY Chandrachud broke down as he summed his term saying, “There is nothing more pleasing than being able to serve those in need.”.

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