Chief Justice of India S.A. Bobde on Wednesday recommended to the Central Government to appoint Justice N.V. Ramana as his successor. Chief Justice Bobde is set to retire on April 23.
With a little over a month left before his retirement, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had written to Chief Justice Bobde, seeking his recommendation to start the process of appointing the next Chief Justice of India.
After sending the letter of recommendation to the Centre, Chief Justice Bobde handed over a copy of the recommendation to Ramana, who is expected to take over as the 48th Chief Justice on April 24.
Born on August 27, 1957, Justice Ramana, the senior-most judge in the Apex Court, has a tenure till August 26, 2022. He will be the first judge from Andhra Pradesh High Court to serve as Chief Justice of India.
In June 2000, Justice Ramana was appointed as a permanent judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court. He also served as the Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, following which he was elevated to the Supreme Court on February 17, 2014.
As per the Memorandum of Procedure, which governs the appointment of members of the higher judiciary, the appointment to the office of the Chief Justice of India should be of the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court considered fit to hold office.
According to the process, after the receipt of the recommendation of the chief justice, the law minister places it in front of the Prime Minister, who advises the President on the matter of appointment.
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Justice Bobde succeeded Justice Ranjan Gogoi and was sworn in as the 47th Chief Justice of India in November 2019. In his tenure as Chief Justice of India, he has been part of several key cases, including the five-judge Constitution Bench that passed the historic verdict that cleared the way for the construction of a Ram Temple at the disputed site in Ayodhya.