There is a string of coincidences binding the five people that make up the Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court that is the focus of legal luminaries and rights groups not just in India but around the world.
The bench led by Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and comprising justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, S Ravindra Bhat, Hima Kohli, and PS Narasimha started hearing the batch of petitions seeking legal validity of same-sex marriage on April 18.
And all five, despite hailing from different states — Maharashtra, Jammu and Kashmir, Karnataka, Delhi, and Telangana — have had a base in Delhi since their youth.
Three of them, Chandrachud, Kaul, and Bhat, were in fact batch mates, having graduated from Delhi University’s Campus Law Centre in 1982.
There’s more: Chandrachud, Kaul, and Kohli are all alumni of the prestigious St Stephen’s College in Delhi. The other two judges, Bhat and Narasimha, earned their undergraduate degrees from Hindu College Delhi and Nizam University, respectively.
Both Chandrachud and Narasimha also served as additional solicitor generals at different points in time. While Chandrachud was an ASG in the Bombay High Court from 1998 to 2000, Narasimha was an ASG in the Supreme Court from 2014 to 2018.
Bhat is most senior by age and is set to retire from the apex court in October 2023, followed by Kaul, who will retire in December 2023. But since the seniority of judges in the Supreme Court is based on the date of appointment, Chandrachud holds the position of being the most senior, having joined the court in 2016. Kaul was appointed in 2017 and Bhat in 2019. Narasimha and Kohli are the junior judges on the bench as they were both appointed in 2021.
Chandrachud, who will retire in November 2024, will also have an eight-year stint, which is double the average stint for a judge in the apex court.
Kaul, the next in order of seniority both at the SC and on the bench, was a senior advocate who practiced in the Supreme Court and Delhi High Court before being elevated to the bench in 2001. He served as the Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court and Madras High Court before being made a judge of the Supreme Court.
Bhat was an eminent lawyer who practiced in the Delhi High Court and Supreme Court till he was appointed as a judge of the Delhi High Court in 2004. He was appointed as the Chief Justice of the High Court of Rajasthan in 2019, before being elevated to the Supreme Court the same year.
Kohli, the only woman judge on the bench, had a prolific career both as a lawyer and as a judge in the Delhi High Court. Appointed as a judge of the Delhi High Court in 2006, she delivered a slew of important judgments. She was appointed Chief Justice of the Telangana High Court in January 2021, before being elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court in August 2021.
Narasimha is likely to be appointed as the Chief Justice of India in 2027 as per the existing norms of the court, and will serve as the CJI till June 2028. He is also the only judge to have been made a judge of the Supreme Court directly from the bar. Before being appointed as a judge of the SC, Narasimha, practiced as a lawyer in the Supreme Court and various tribunals in cases involving constitutional, administrative, and environmental issues among other fields of law.
This Constitution Bench is likely to deliver the verdict on legal sanctity of same-sex marriage before October 2023, when Bhat is slated to retire.
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