Justice Surya Kant, who was sworn in as India’s 53rd chief justice on Monday, said he decides the case based on “facts and law” and is largely unaffected by social media trolls who try to misrepresent, misquote or selectively solicit judicial comments.
Justice Kant has been a part of several landmark verdicts and orders on abrogation of Article 370, which took away the special status of Jammu and Kashmir, the revision of Bihar’s electoral rolls and the Pegasus spyware case.
He will succeed Justice BR Gavaie. Judge Kant will remain in office for nearly 15 months; will vacate the post on 9 February 2027 after reaching the age of 65.
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“Not influenced by trolls…”: Judge Kant
Justice Surya Kant told the media that he was never pressured by campaigns or motivated by social media coverage. “I think the vast majority of judges would not be swayed by social media trolls when deciding cases based on the facts and the law,” he said.
Outlining his priorities as CJI, Justice Kant said that during his tenure he would focus on developing a strategy to reduce the backlog of 90,000 cases in the Supreme Court and around 5 million cases in the HC and district courts.
Justice Kant also said that the list of long pending cases will be given priority. He pointed out that thousands of cases raising the same or similar questions of law are pending in various high courts, which have adjourned them pending SC verdicts.
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About Justice Surya Kant
Justice Kant was born on 10 February 1962 in Hisar district of Haryana to a middle-class family. He rose from a small-town lawyer to the highest judicial office in the country, where he was involved in several judgments and orders of national importance and constitutional matters. In 2011, he obtained a “First Class” degree in Master of Laws from Kurukshetra University.
Justice Kant, who has written several landmark judgments in the Punjab and Haryana HC, was appointed as the Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh HC on 5 October 2018.
His work as a judge of the Supreme Court is marked by verdicts on the abolition of Article 370, freedom of expression and civil rights.
The judge was part of a recent presidential reference to the powers of the governor and the president to discuss bills passed by the state assembly. The verdict is eagerly awaited with potential ramifications across states.
He was part of the bench that kept the colonial-era Sedition Act in abeyance and ordered that no new FIRs be registered under it pending a government review.
Justice Kant also nudged the Election Commission to release details of the 65 million voters excluded from the draft electoral rolls in Bihar while hearing a number of petitions challenging the Election Commission’s decision to conduct a special intensive review (SIR) of the electoral roll in the poll-bound state.
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In an order that emphasized people’s democracy and gender justice, he led the bench that reinstated a woman sarpanch who had been illegally removed from office and highlighted gender bias in the matter.
He is also credited with ordering that one-third of the seats at the Bar, including the Supreme Court Bar, be reserved for women.
Justice Kant was part of the bench that appointed a five-member committee headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Indu Malhotra to probe the security breach during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s visit to Punjab in 2022, saying such matters required “just a trained mind”.
He also supported the One Rank-One Pension system for the defense forces, calling it constitutionally valid, and continues to hear petitions from officers in the armed forces seeking parity in permanent commission.
Justice Kant was in the seven-judge bench that set aside the Aligarh Muslim University judgment of 1967, paving the way for a review of the institution’s minority status.
He was also part of the bench that heard the Pegasus spyware case, which appointed a group of cyber experts to investigate allegations of illegal surveillance, famously declaring that the state could not get a “free pass under the guise of national security”.
