India

Justice Dipak Misra sworn in as the 45th Chief Justice of India

India: Justice Dipak Misra was on Monday sworn in as the 45th Chief Justice of India.

President Ramnath Kovind administered the oath of office to Mr. Misra at a brief ceremony in the Darbar Hall of Rashtrapati Bhawan.

Justice Misra, 64, assumes office following the retirement of Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar on Sunday.

As per the established practice, Justice Khehar had named Mr. Misra as the next CJI last month.

Misra (64) began his career on February 14, 1977, when he was enrolled as an advocate. He was appointed as an additional judge of the Orissa High Court in 1996, and transferred to Madhya Pradesh a year later. In 2009, he became the chief justice of the Patna High Court before moving to head Delhi HC in 2010.

On October 10, 2011, Misra was appointed to the Supreme Court.

Justice Misra led the three-judge Bench which heard Yakub Memon, the sole condemned man in the Bombay blasts case. The bench refused mercy to Memon, who was executed on the morning July 30, 2015.

He also headed the three-judge bench that handed down death sentences to the convicts in the December 16 gang rape-cum-murder case in which a 23-year-old girl was brutally assaulted and killed.

The new chief justice of the country Dipak Misra, has long-pending allegations against him that he acquired public land intended for the landless poor by submitting a false affidavit.

An Odisha-based activist, Jayanta Kumar Das, had alleged in a letter to then CJI T.S. Thakur in September 2016 that Justice Misra misrepresented facts in attempting to get hold of public land meant to be distributed to the landless poor for agricultural purposes.

According to information furnished by Das, Justice Misra had applied for allotment of the land to develop a fodder farm in 1979. While in his application to the Odisha government he declared that his family owned 10 acres of land although none of it was in his name, he allegedly concealed this information in a subsequent affidavit.

The affidavit later became the basis for allotment of two acres of land to Justice Misra.

A false statement made in declaration, which is by law receivable as evidence, and using as true such declaration knowing it to be false, are serious offences under Section 199 and Section 200 of the IPC, punishable with up to seven years of imprisonment and a fine. The filing of that affidavit by Justice Misra is thus a very serious matter.

Noted lawyer and political activist Prashant Bhushan told The Wire that it may be too late for any action now. “The charge against Justice Misra is serious. However, in view of the fact that it is quite old and now that he is due to become the CJI very soon, it would be difficult to do anything about it,” he said.

Justice Misra is not new to controversy. His name emerged in the 60-page suicide letter by the former chief minister of Arunachal Pradesh, Kalikho Pul, earlier this year. Pul had alleged that relatives of top Supreme Court judges had approached him with offers to swing the president’s rule case in his favour.

Justice Misra was the senior judge on the bench that last November ruled in favour of a petition that the national anthem be played before the screening of all movies in cinema halls and that audience goers had to stand to attention for it.

In another controversial decision last year, a bench comprising Justice Misra had rejected the Uttar Pradesh government’s decision to provide reservation in promotion of government employees. He also led the bench which upheld the law of criminal defamation.

Besides the challenge to appoint judges, Misra has work cut out for him on the judicial side. He will be hearing contentious cases such as the Babri-Masjid dispute, Cauvery water dispute, women’s right to enter the Sabrimala temple in Kerala, and the legal challenge to Article 35A that gives special status Kashmir.

Justice Misra’s tenure will last till October 2018.

The CJI is a constitutional authority and presides over the country’s judiciary, comprising 31 Supreme Court justices, over 1000 high court judges and over 16,000 subordinate judges. The CJI dispenses justice in the highest court in cases involving complex constitutional issues, issues affecting the rule of law, issues having an impact on governance in the country, issues touching the lives and liberties of 1.3 billion Indians, and dispenses justice in regular civil and criminal appeals. As head of the Supreme Court, the CJI wields wide powers not just in administration but also in constituting benches and allocating matters, often politically sensitive ones.

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