INDIA: Justice Uday Umesh Lalit is the 49th Chief Justice of India. He took the pledge in front of President Droupadi Murmu, at Rashtrapati Bhavan in the presence of Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and other Union Ministers.
Justice Lalit became the second CJI, to be directly elected to the Supreme Court from the Bar, succeeding Justice SM Sikri.
Justice UU Lalit called attention to three specific areas in which he contemplated working during the possession of 74-days, as the head of the judiciary.
He said, “So, we will strive hard to say that yes, we will always have at least one constitution bench functioning throughout the year.” Adding more to it, said, “….I must assure you that we will strive hard to make the listing as simple, as clear, and as transparent as possible.”
Talking of the urgent cases that need the attention of the table he said, “I will have a word with all my learned colleagues on the bench and we will certainly sort that out and very shortly, you will have a clear-cut regime where any urgent matter can freely be mentioned before the respective courts.”
Adding stress to his words he furthermore continued, “I have always believed that the role of the Supreme Court is to lay down law with clarity, consistency, and the best possible way to do it is to have larger benches as early as possible, wherever the matters are referred to such benches so that the issues get clarified immediately, the matter has consistency and the people are well aware of what exactly are the contours of the peculiar positions in law.”
Justice Ramana, who was the CJI for the last year, suggested Uday Umesh Lalit as his successor and recommended him as the new eligible candidate for the post.
