New Delhi: Justice Uday Umesh Lalit has been appointed the 49th Chief Justice of India (CJI), a government notification said on Wednesday.
He would be sworn in by President Droupadi Murmu as CJI on August 27 and will have a brief tenure of less than three months before retiring on November 8 at the age of 65. The shortest tenure so far has been 17 days, served by Justice Kamal Narain Singh in 1991, reports NDTV.
Outgoing Chief Justice NV Ramana, who retires on August 26, had recommended to the Centre to appoint Justice Uday Umesh Lalit — the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court — as his successor and the next CJI.
Justice Lalit was among the few bold HC judges who went by the law and defied political pressure to keep granting bail to undertrial political prisoners during the 1975 emergency. He was then an additional judge in the Delhi high court.
After enrolling as an advocate in June 1983, he practised for two years in the Bombay HC before shifting to Delhi in January 1986. He was designated as a senior advocate by the SC in 2004. The SC bench headed by Justice G S Singhvi had appointed him as the special public prosecutor in the 2G spectrum sale scam cases.
He was appointed a judge of the SC on August 13, 2014.
