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Justice T S Thakur Appointed As 43rd Chief Justice of India

On Thursday, Justice T S Thakur turning 63 years was sworn in as the 43rd Chief Justice of India by Pranab Mukherjee, President of India. The function was conducted at Rashtrapati Bhavan. He took his oath in the name of God. Justice Tirath Singh Thakur was appointed as the Supreme Court Judge in November 2009 and is the senior most judge of the Supreme Court. He will retire from the post on 4th January, 2017 and will have very short span of service as the CJI.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with other cabinet ministers like Rajnath Singh, Arun Jaitley, Sushama Swaraj, Smriti Irani, Sadananada Gowda and Harsh Vardhan attended the function. Senior BJP leader L K Advani was also part of the ceremony. Former Chief Justices and other judges also were present at the swearing in ceremony. Along with other family members, his mother Saraswati Thakur was also present at the occasion. Justice Thakur took over the charge after retirement of Justice H L Dattu yesterday.

Justice Thakur had delivered many important judgments during his term as the Supreme Court judge. In a famous case, he pronounced a judgment where it was held that polygamy can be regulated by the government by formulating law. Further the functions of BCCI was regulated by passing many orders during his tenure. Yet another important role played by Justice Thakur is supervision of the Ganga project as well as the issue of chit fund scam.

Last day, Justice Thakur said that there are two priorities for a Chief Justice. One is to infuse transparency in appointing judges by means of the collegium and secondly to reduce the number of pending cases. He also said that he will take immediate steps to appoint judges to higher judicial service. It was also pointed out that the striking down of National Judicial Appointments Commission (NJAC) and revamping the collegium system is now the law of the land. From now onwards, the appointment of judges will be under the collegium.

Adv. Jewel Panicker