India Today – October 08, 2018

44 INDIA TODAY OCTOBER 8, 2018

THE BIG STORY | CJI

Educational Welfare Association
(SEWA) for the upliftment of margin-
alised communities.
Given this family background,
expectedly, at every critical stage in
his life, CJI Gogoi has been a com-
manding public speaker and a superb
debater: at Dibrugarh’s Don Bosco
School, Cotton College in Gauhati, St
Stephen’s College or Delhi University.
His debating edge was on display at
the NJAC trial (“The moment you
convince us we made a mistake, we
will admit it.”) Mentored by senior
advocate J.P. Bha ttacharjee, he devel-
oped a mastery in constitutional, tax
and company law at the Gauhati Bar,
was appointed a Permanent Judge
of Gauhati High Court at 47, Chief
Justice of the Punjab and Haryana
High Court at 57 and a Supreme
Court justice the very next year. While
a Supreme Court judge generally has
a tenure of three to six years before he
retires at 65, Justice Gogoi, who is due
to retire on November 17, 2019, will
clock seven years at the court, with 14
months as its chief.

T

HE CJI ALSO HAS AN ENVIABLE
reputation for probity. Retiring
by nature, it is said, Justice
Gogoi uses his reputation as
a recluse to bark even at close
family members if they become too cu-
rious about a case. He is one of only 11
out of 25 sitting judges in the Supreme
Court who have made public details of
their assets and financial holdings on
the court website. According to it, CJI
Gogoi does not own a car and does not
have any outstanding debts or invest-
ments in mutual funds or shares, his
most significant assets being a piece of
a land in Assam that he sold for Rs 65
lakh in June 2018 and an old property
he inherited from his mother in 2015.
Justice Gogoi is also known to incur
the least travel expense among the
higher judiciary.

TREADING ON POLITICAL TOES
It is said that the road to justice me-
anders through a political minefield.

And CJI Gogoi has stepped on a lot of

political toes during his tenure at the

Supreme Court. He was on the bench

that ruled in 2013 that no one could

contest elections without a full and

honest disclosure of their assets and

educational and criminal antecedents.

He was part of the bench that curbed

political parties from publishing

photographs of leaders and prominent

personalities other than the prime

minister, the president and the CJI in

government-funded advertisements.

In May this year, he revoked a proposal

from the Uttar Pradesh government

that allowed all ex-chief ministers to

retain their ocial residences. In July,

he took serious note of the Centre’s con-

tinued failure to appoint a Lokpal.

It was, however, the defiant Janu-

ary press conference of the four judges

that threw a singular challenge to

the Narendra Modi government. The

judges had alleged misconduct by

then CJI Dipak Misra for arbitrarily

assigning politically significant cases

to junior judges, apart from anoma-

lous judicial appointments—a bone of

contention between the government

and the judiciary. At its core was a

case related to the allegedly suspicious

death of Justice B.H. Loya in 2014, a

special CBI judge who was presiding

over a case in which BJP president

Amit Shah was accused of involve-

ment in extrajudicial killings in 2005

when Narendra Modi was the chief

minister of Gujarat. Justice Gogoi had

acknowledged that their “revolt” was

triggered by the way the Loya case

was being dealt with. The backlash

came in July, when the government

started talking about introducing

a bill to raise the retirement age of

Supreme Court judges by two years,

from the current 65 years. A move that

would have eliminated Justice Gogoi’s

chances of becoming the chief of the

apex court.

TODAY’S CONTEXT

On July 13, the outspoken judge spelt

out the dangers to judicial indepen-

dence at the Ramnath Goenka Memo-

rial Lecture organised by the Indian

Express Group in the national capital:

“While civil liberties will have nothing

to fear from the judiciary alone, they

will have every thing to fear from the

union of the judiciary with either the

executive or the legislature.” It will be

interesting to see how the interaction

between the pillars of our democracy

plays out. But, just as the law yers said,

“Expect fireworks”. ■

JUSTICE GOGOI

ACKNOWLEDGED

THEIR ‘REVOLT’

IN JANUARY WAS

TRIGGERED BY THE

WAY THE JUSTICE

B.H. LOYA CASE WAS

DEALT WITH

Measure of

the Man

Born on November 18, 1954, to

Keshab Chandra Gogoi, former

chief minister of Assam, and

Shanti Gogoi, social activist

2

Second of five children: elder

brother Anjan is a retired air

marshal, younger Nirjan a doctor in

London, sisters are homemakers

3

An alumnus of Don Bosco,

Dibrugarh; Cotton College,

Gauhati; St Stephen’s College, Delhi,

and Delhi University

4

Married to Rupanjali, a homemaker;

son Raktim and daughter

Rashmi are lawyers, the latter is

married to lawyer Tanmay Mehta,

son of Delhi High Court Justice

Valmiki Mehta

5

A football player and a debater in his

youth, now regularly plays chess

1