Nagpur: The High Court Bar Association of Nagpur (HCBA) is all set to felicitate the newly-appointed Chief Justice of India (CJI) Uday U Lalit today.
Justice Lalit took charge as the CJI on August 27. The CJI will be felicitated at Dr Vasantrao Deshpande Hall in Civil Lines at 6:30pm. Supreme Court Judge Justice Bhusan R Gavai will be attending the function as the chief guest.
Chief Justice, Bombay High Court Justice Dipankar Datta and former Judge of the top court Justice Vikas S Sirpurkar, too, will be the guests of honour on this occasion. Justice Sunil B Shukre, Justice Atul S Chandurkar and former Chief Justice, Bombay High Court Bhushan P Dharmadhikari will also be present in the event.
Justice Lalit was born on November 9, 1957 and enrolled as an advocate in June 1983. He took over as the CJI a day after Justice N V Ramana retired.
Justice Lalit will have a brief tenure of 74 days as the head of India’s judiciary and would demit office on 8 November.
Yesterday, at the farewell function of Justice Ramana, Justice Lalit said that during his tenure of nearly three months he will focus on three key areas and one of his top priorities would be to make the listing of cases simple, clear and as transparent as possible.
Justice Lalit has also promised to ensure a clear-cut regime where any urgent matters can freely be mentioned before the respective benches of the top court.
He assured that there will be at least one Constitution Bench functioning throughout the year in the Supreme Court.
Justice Lalit said, “I have always believed that the role of the Supreme Court is to lay down law with clarity, consistency, and the best possible way to do it is to have larger benches as early as possible, wherever the matters are referred to such benches so that the issues get clarified immediately, the matter has consistency and the people are well aware of what exactly are the contours of the peculiar positions in law.”
Justice Lalit was a renowned senior advocate before he became the judge of the apex court. He was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court on August 13, 2014.
Justice Lalit will be the second CJI who was directly elevated to the Supreme Court bench from the Bar.
Justice S M Sikri, who became the 13th CJI in January 1971, was the first lawyer to be elevated directly to the top court bench in March 1964.
Justice Lalit was born on November 9, 1957, in Maharashtra’s Solapur.
His father, U R Lalit, was an additional judge at the Nagpur bench of the Bombay high court and a senior advocate at the Supreme Court.
Justice Lalit enrolled as an advocate in June 1983.
He specialised in criminal law and practised at the Bombay high court from 1983 to 1985.
He shifted his practice to Delhi in January 1986, and in April 2004, he was designated as a senior advocate by the top court.
He was later appointed a special public prosecutor for the CBI to conduct the trial in the 2G spectrum allocation case.
After Justice Lalit’s retirement on November 8, Justice D Y Chandrachud is scheduled to be appointed as the 50th Chief Justice of India.
