Chandigarh 16 March (Wishavwarta)-Former chief justice Ranjan Gogoi, who retired in November 2019, is the latest after he was nominated to the Rajya Sabha by President Ram Nath Kovind. . He was appointed for a 13-month stint, and he took over from Justice Dipak Mishra.
A bench headed by Gogoi also ruled that Chief Justice Office falls under RTI but placed some riders. And, in another judgement, a bench headed by him in a majority judgement of 3:2 referred the Sabarimala temple judgement of 2018 to a larger bench. Justice Gogoi also pursued the Assam NRC, and tasked the authorities concerned to publish the final list before August 31, 2019.
In another politically sensitive judgment, a three-judge bench, headed by Gogoi, and comprising Justices S.K. Kaul and K.M. Joseph, on 14 November dismissed a review petition challenging the Rafale deal case. A bench headed by Gogoi also censured Congress leader Rahul Gandhi for wrongfully attributing the “Chowkidar chor hai” remark against Prime Minister Narendra Modi to the top court.
On his last working day Gogoi had said the judicial system is facing new challenges, which emerge from within and outside of court complexes and judicial processes.
The Chief Justice, who demitted office on November 17, did not directly refer to the sexual harassment allegations against him by a court staffer, but instead said: “As an institution, we have tried to deliver much more than what is reasonably possible, yet, today each of us is required to deal with new challenges, which unfortunately arise from within and outside of our court complexes and our judicial processes.”
