Who is Justice NV Ramana, the next Chief Justice of India?

President Ram Nath Kovind on April 6 appointed Justice NV Ramana as the 48th Chief Justice of India (CJI), accepting the recommendation made by his predecessor SA Bobde, who is due to retire on April 23.

Justice Ramana, 63, who will take oath on April 24, will remain in office until August 26, 2022. It will be the longest tenure for a CJI in nearly a decade,  according to the legal news website, Bar and Bench.

A student leader, a journalist and now the next CJI

Born on August 27, 1957 in an agricultural family in the Ponnavaram village in Krishna district of undivided Andhra Pradesh, Justice Ramana was a student leader during the nationwide Emergency in 1975. He lost an academic year too during his days as a student activist.

“My father was convinced that I will be arrested,” Justice Ramana was reported to have said recounting his experience at an event in Delhi in January.

Read: Judges should be fearless in their decisions: SC's Justice N V Ramana

Justice Ramana worked as a journalist for a regional newspaper for two years before enrolling as an advocate on February 10, 1983.

As a lawyer, he practiced in the High Court of Andhra Pradesh, Central and Andhra Pradesh Administrative Tribunals and the Supreme Court of India in civil, criminal, constitutional, labour, service, and election matters.

He has specialized in constitutional, criminal, service and inter-state river laws, according to the website of National Legal Services Authority.

National Legal Services Authority of India, which was set up on November 9, 1995, provides free legal aid to eligible candidates and organizes Lok Adalats for speedy resolution of cases. The CJI is its Patron-in-Chief.

Justice Ramana has also functioned as Additional Standing Counsel for the central government and Standing Counsel for Railways in the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT) at Hyderabad, besides serving as Additional Advocate General of Andhra Pradesh.

On June 27, 2000, he was appointed as a Permanent Judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court and functioned as acting Chief Justice of the Andhra Pradesh High Court from March 10, 2013 to May 20, 2013.

Justice Ramana was elevated as the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court on September 2, 2013 and then as a Judge in the Supreme Court on February 17, 2014.

Landmark judgments

As a Supreme Court Judge, Justice Ramana has been part of several landmark judgments, including the one about fast tracking of trials in cases against legislators and restrictions imposed in Jammu and Kashmir before and after the abrogation of Article 370.

On March 2 last year, a five-judge Constitution bench led by Justice Ramana declined a plea to refer to a larger Bench petitions challenging the abrogation of Article 370 of the Constitution, which gave special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir. Earlier, in one of the judgments in January 2020, Justice Ramana ruled that access to the internet is a fundamental right by extension, while pulling the government up for the telecommunications blackout in Jammu and Kashmir after the state's special status was revoked on August 5, 2019.

In another judgment, a five-judge Bench of the Supreme Court headed by Justice Ramana, dismissed a curative petition filed by Pawan Kumar Gupta who was sentenced to death in the 2012 Nirbhaya gang rape and murder case, thus paving way for his execution. Four Nirbhaya case convicts, including Pawan Kumar Gupta, were hanged to death in Tihar jail on March 20, 2020.

He also delivered the landmark verdict in the Karnataka assembly case, clarifying the legal position that disqualification under the Tenth Schedule for defection could not operate as a bar for contesting re-election.

In February this year, a Bench headed by him held that the restriction against grant of bail in a stringent law like The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967, “per se does not oust the ability of constitutional courts to grant bail on grounds of violation” of a fundamental right to a speedy trial.

Jagan Reddy’s complaint dismissed

Last week, Chief Justice of India, Sharad A Bobde, recommended Justice Ramana, the senior most judge of the Supreme Court, as the next top judge. The CJI’s recommendation came after a complaint sent by Andhra Chief Minister YS Jagan Mohan Reddy against Justice Ramana to the CJI on October 6 last year, was dismissed under an In-House Procedure.

“A complaint dated October 6, 2020 sent by the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh to the Supreme Court was dealt with under the In-House Procedure and the same, on due consideration, stands dismissed. It be noted that all the matters dealt with under the In-House Procedure being strictly confidential in nature, are not liable to be made public,” the statement published on the Supreme Court’s website said.

Also, read: ‘Conspiracy to topple Andhra Pradesh government’: CM Jagan Mohan Reddy writes to CJI

Reddy had complained that Justice Ramana was influencing the Andhra High Court judiciary to destabilise his government. In the eight-page letter, Reddy had questioned Ramana's alleged `proximity’ to TDP leader and former chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.

The letter claimed that attempts were being made to topple his state government. "The institution of the High Court is being used to destabilise and topple the democratically elected government," Reddy said in his letter. Well, that charge now stands nullified.