(MENAFN- Live Mint) Justice Surya Kant took oath as the 53rd Chief Justice of India (CJI) at Rashtrapati Bhavan on Monday. Justice Kant 63, succeeded Justice BR Gavai, who retired officially on 23 November.

Hailing from Haryana, Justice Surya Kant has many firsts associated with him. He is the first judge from Haryana to occupy the country's highest judicial office. He will serve as CJI for just over 14 months until 9 February 2027 and is the first CJI from Haryana.

First-generation lawyer

Born on 10 February 1962, in Petwar village of Narnaund region in Haryana's Hisar, Justice Kant hails from humble beginnings.

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Justice Kant is the first-generation lawyer from the family, according to Justice Kant's elder brother, Rishi Kant, a retired drawing teacher who lives in the old family house.

Justice Kant is the youngest of five siblings. He has three brothers and a sister. His eldest sister Kamla Devi, 74, lives in Jind. His brother Dr Shiv Kant is a pulmonologist in Bhiwani, and Dev Kant (66) retired from the Industrial Training Institute (ITI) as an instructor and settled in Hisar.

Justice Surya Kant Family

Justice Kant's Madan Gopal Shastri taught Sanskrit at a government school, and his mother was a homemaker. His wife, Savita Kant, retired as principal of a government college in Panchkula.

Currently, there are 33 Judges in the Supreme Court, including the CJI, Kant. Of these, at least 11 Judges are closely related to former judges. About 10 SC judges had fathers who were lawyers. Justice Kant is an exception of a sort in this sense.

Justice Kant's predecessor, Justice BR Gavai (retd), also came from a non-legal background. Gavai's father, Ramakrishna Suryabhan Gavai, a politician, was a well-known Ambedkarite leader and founder of the Republican Party of India.

First Harana-origin Chief Justice of India

While several judges associated with the Punjab and Haryana High Court have become Chief Justices of India in the past, Justice Surya Kant is the first to originally hail from Haryana itself.

Earlier Chief Justices like Jagdish Singh Khehar were associated with the Punjab and Haryana High Court, but were not originally from the state of Haryana.

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At just 38, Justice Kant was the youngest advocate general of Haryana. In 2004, he was appointed as a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court at the age of 42. After serving on the bench for over 14 years, he was appointed Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court on October 5, 2018, and subsequently became a Supreme Court judge on 24 May 2019.

Education

Justice Kant passed his class 10th from the local school in his ancestral village in Hisar. He pursued his undergraduate education at Government PG College, Hisar, and earned his LLB from Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak, in 1984. As a sitting judge, he completed LLM from Kurukshetra University through distance learning in 2011, standing first in the varsity.

10 landmark judgments

Justice Kant has penned several notable judgments in the Supreme Court of India, where he has been a judge since May 2019.

1- Justice Kant was part of the recent presidential reference on the powers of the Governor and President in dealing with bills passed by a state assembly.

2.- Justice Kant was part of the bench that kept the colonial-era sedition law in abeyance, directing that no new FIRs be registered under it until a government review.

3- Justice Kant also nudged the Election Commission to disclose the details of 65 lakh voters excluded from the draft electoral rolls in Bihar while hearing a batch of petitions challenging the poll panel's decision to undertake Special Intensive Revision (SIR) of the voters list in the poll-bound state.

4- Justice Kant was part of the bench that appointed a five-member committee headed by former top court judge Justice Indu Malhotra to probe the security breach during Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Punjab in 2022, saying such matters required“a judicially trained mind”.

5- He also upheld the One Rank-One Pension scheme for defence forces, calling it constitutionally valid, and continues to hear petitions of women officers in the armed forces seeking parity in permanent commission.

6- Justice Kant was on the seven-judge bench that overruled the 1967 Aligarh Muslim University judgment, opening the way for reconsideration of the institution's minority status.

7- Justice Kant was also part of the bench which heard the Pegasus spyware case and which appointed a panel of cyber experts to probe allegations of unlawful surveillance, famously stating that the state cannot get a "free pass under the guise of national security".

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8- In Kirti vs Oriental Insurance Company Ltd Case in 2021, the Supreme Court bench, which included Justice Kant, increased accident compensation from Ts 22 Lakh to ₹33.2 Lakh, holding that it was problematic to believe that homemakers do not work or add economic value of a household.

Justice Kant's appointment marks a significant milestone in the judiciary, representing the aspirations of many from humble backgrounds.

9- In the 'India Got Latent ' row in 2025 involving YouTuber Ranveer Allahbadia, Justice Kant warned that free speech is not absolute.

10- In 2024, Justice Kant ordered one-third reservation for women in bar associations, including the Supreme Court Bar Association.

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