CJI Chandrachud’s tenure controversial, disappointing, forgettable: Dushyant Dave

Barely a week before Chief Justice of India D.Y. Chandrachud is due to demit his office on 10 November, senior lawyer Dushyant Dave said he has been deeply disappointed by the CJI’s tenure.

Several weeks before Justice Chandrachud took over as the CJI in November 2022, Dave recalled, he had written a congratulatory letter to the CJI designate — but had also voiced his apprehension that in politically sensitive cases, the new CJI could disappoint the nation.

In a wide-ranging interview with Karan Thapar for the Wire, Dave answered questions on the judgements delivered by CJI Chandrachud, his performance as the master of the roster, his administrative orders, his conduct outside the court — and his insatiable urge for media attention and his failures as a judge and his failure to administer justice and reform the judicial system as CJI.

Among other things, Dave — himself a former president of the Supreme Court Bar Association — singled out the following faultlines in the CJI’s tenure, among the longest in recent times:

1. CJI Chandrachud spoke eloquently on women’s rights outside the courtroom but although the collegium headed by him appointed as many as 17 judges to the Supreme Court, not one of them was a woman.

2. No Chief Justice of India has been as media-savvy and as prominent in the media as CJI Chandrachud — and that is not something that chief justices should be known for.

3. As the master of the roster, CJI Chandrachud acted arbitrarily and subjectively, allotting sensitive cases to specific benches that appeared to pander to the party in power. Indeed, in an unprecedented action, he withdrew a case being heard by a bench headed by Justice Sanjay Krishna Kaul, which was pulling up the government for not implementing the recommendations of the collegium — thus letting the government off the hook.

4. In his administrative role, CJI Chandrachud’s conduct was largely symbolic — reopening a clinic in the court, putting up a sign on the lawns of the court, screening the film Laapataa Ladies for judges and their wives, unveiling a new statue of Lady Justicia and removing the blindfold from her eyes, replacing her sword with a copy of the Constitution, etc.

5. As CJI, Chandrachud seems to have been eerily ineffectual where he could have been most effective.

He ducked a large number of politically sensitive cases and sat over the legal challenges to the Citizenship Amendment Act, on contentious cases related to 'love jihad', hijab bans, etc.

As a judge, he refused to order an inquiry into the death of special judge Loya under mysterious circumstances while hearing a politically sensitive case.

He also was part of the bench that ordered an inquiry by the National Investigating Agency (NIA) into the Hadia case, where an adult Hindu woman had married a Muslim man. The woman finally appeared before the apex court to say that she had married on her own free will.

6. As the CJI, his tenure saw the number of pending cases in the Supreme Court go up from ~69,000 in 2022 to ~82,000 in 2024. In the high courts, the pending cases went up during the same period from 45 million to 51 million. He has failed, then, to deliver justice quickly, and a large number of cases have remained pending for more than 30 years now.

7. Dave questioned several of the judgements delivered by CJI Chandrachud, including the ones on the constitutionality of abrogating Article 370, the refusal to set up an SIT to inquire into the quid pro quo of electoral bonds, the Ayodhya verdict and the tweaking of a decision by a three-judge bench to enable Jay Shah to become the BCCI secretary.

8. CJI Chandrachud did, however, deliver several populist judgements, for which he was applauded — such as the judgement overturning the colonial criminalisation of homosexuality. However, Dave says, the CJO was sailing with the wind there and knew that those judgements would get him more attention and applause around the world.

9. The CJI cannot escape his responsibility for not ensuring the bail hearing for political dissenters such as Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam, not to speak of the accused in the far-fetched Bhima Koregaon case, for years and ensuring that they remain incarcerated without trial.

10. By inviting the prime minister to his residence to perform an aarti together and by saying that he had derived divine inspiration for authoring the Ayodhya judgement, which he refused to sign (along with fellow judges), Dave feels, CJI Chandrachud exposed himself. His judicial approach has been ‘inexplicable’, said Dave.

Describing CJI Chandrachud as intellectually brilliant, Dave lamented that he failed to stand up to the executive.

He cited an instance when the CJI summoned all the members of the NCLAT, did not offer them a seat in his chamber and pulled them up for not setting aside a decision which went against a corporate body. While the CJI pulled up the NCLAT members, among them a retired High Court judge, Dave laments that he failed to stand up to the political and the bureaucratic top brass himself.