By Sabah Gurmat / The Wire
Chief Justice of India (CJI) N.V. Ramana on August 4 recommended Justice Uday Umesh Lalit as his successor, which was confirmed by President Droupadi Murmu on August 10. CJI Ramana is set to retire on August 26. Justice Lalit will assume charge on August 27.
As per the constitution, Supreme Court judges are meant to retire by the age of 65. Justice Lalit will have a brief tenure of less than three months. He will turn 65 in November when he will be required to demit office.
Hailing from Maharashtra, Justice Lalit was born on November 9, 1957 and joined the bar in June 1983 to practice in the Bombay high court. He later practiced in the Supreme Court from 1986, with the top court designating him as a senior advocate in 2004.
Lalit’s father, U.R. Lalit, was also a senior advocate and served as additional judge of the Delhi high court. Both father and son built their legal practice primarily in the field of criminal law, and the then-lawyer Lalit was also appointed as amicus curiae under various Supreme Court benches.
Prior to his elevation as a judge in August 2014, Justice Lalit’s career as a lawyer also involved several high-profile and controversial cases. For instance, he represented Amit Shah in the purported fake encounter killings of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati.
The killings of Sheikh, his wife Kauserbi, and associate Tulsiram Prajapati were all part of a series of alleged cover-ups which put the then Gujarat home minister Amit Shah as well as the state’s Narendra Modi-led government under legal scrutiny. The same case was also linked to a controversy over the newly formed Modi government sending back the recommendation of senior advocate Gopal Subramanium for judgeship. Bar & Bench reported that Lalit’s appointment as a Supreme Court judge came as a replacement for Subramanium.
Subramanium, who had previously been appointed as the solicitor general under the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, wrote that he was being targeted for displaying “independence and integrity” for his role in assisting the court in the 2005 case involving the alleged extrajudicial killing of Sohrabuddin Sheikh.
Meanwhile, Firstpost had reported that Subramanium’s rejection was based on a Central Bureau of Investigation report which claimed that he had privately met the counsel for A. Raja during the 2G spectrum case, a charge he had denied.
In an unprecedented move, then CJI R.M. Lodha went on record to say that the National Democratic Alliance-led government had “segregated” Subramanium’s file “unilaterally” and without the CJI’s knowledge and consent.
This story was originally published in thewire.in . Read the full story here