CJI Bobde recommends Justice NV Ramana as his successor

Chief Justice of India S.A. Bobde on Wednesday recommended the name of Justice N.V. Ramana as his successor.

It was expected that Ramana, the senior-most justice of the Supreme Court after CJI Bobde, would be recommended, as per convention. Bobde is due to retire on April 23.

Last week, Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad sent a letter to Chief Justice Bobde, seeking his recommendation for his successor.

As per the Memorandum of Procedure governing the appointment of members of the higher judiciary, "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 the office". It stipulates that the law minister would, at an appropriate time, seek the recommendation of the outgoing chief justice of India for the appointment of the next CJI.

Under this process, after receipt of the recommendation of the CJI, the law minister puts it before the prime minister, who advises the president in the matter of appointment.

Justice Ramana was born on August 27, 1957. Once appointed as the 48th chief justice of India, Ramana will hold office until August 26, 2022.

Hailing from an agrarian family in Andhra Pradesh, Justice Ramana was appointed a permanent judge of the Andhra Pradesh High Court in 2000. He also served as chief justice of the Delhi High Court, before being elevated to the Supreme Court in February 2014. Justice Ramana specialises in Constitutional, criminal, service and inter-state river laws.

Notable judgments of which Justice Ramana was part of include him being member of the Supreme Court bench that ordered a review of the suspension of internet services in Jammu and Kashmir after abrogation of Article 370 and also being part of the bench that ruled office of chief justice of India came under ambit of RTI.

Ramana was embroiled in a controversy in October last year when Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Y.S. Jagan Mohan Reddy wrote a rare letter to. Reddy accused Ramana of influencing the functioning of the state High Court and his alleged proximity to former chief minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and referred to an Anti-Corruption Bureau investigation into “questionable transactions” of land by Ramana’s two daughters and others in Amravati.