A Chief Justice of India is the highest judge in the Supreme Court of India. The position of the Chief Justice of India is the highest judicial position obtainable by a judge in India. The Chief Justice not only leads and executes the administrative functions of the Supreme Court but also acquires the active position as a presiding judge in Court No. 1 of the Supreme Court of India.
In the arena of administrative ground, the Chief Justice of India carries out the following functions -
Allocation of matters to various other judges of the Supreme Court
Appointment of court officials
General and other diverse matters that are related to supervision and functioning of the Supreme Court
Maintenance of roaster
As the chief judge, the Chief Justice allocates those cases and appoints the constitutional benches, which deal with important matters of law. In terms of Article 145 of the Constitution of India and the Supreme Court Rules of Procedure of 1966, the Chief Justice appoints the respective work to the other judges who are bound to submit the matter to him in case they require the matter to be looked into by a bench of higher potency.
The process of appointment of Chief Justice of India is mentioned in the Constitution of India, in the chapter of Article 124. However there was no definite provision as to the appointment of the Chief Justice to the Supreme Court. Therefore the process for the selection of the judges to the Supreme Court was applied for the Chief Justice as well. This in practice meant that the most senior judges in the Supreme Court would be planned by the Government of India and suggested to the President who would approve the same and thus the Chief Justice would be selected. Here seniority does not mean the age but applies to the seniority within the Supreme Court. Therefore the Government generally nominates the judge with the maximum experience in the Supreme Court and he would be appointed as the Chief Justice.
However this convention was not followed on a number of occasions and most notable of which was the appointment of Chief Justice A.N. Ray who was chosen as the Chief Justice intervening three judges who were senior to him. This kind of nomination was done during the time when Indira Gandhi was the Prime Minister of India. This was supposedly done as he was considered to be liberal and understood to be supporting the government in its decisions and Indira Gandhi, who at those times was facing acute constitutional crisis. Activist Raj Narain was challenging her appointments and major legal barriers remained to her continuance as the Prime Minister.
After the Emergency, the Supreme Court in consecutive historical decisions bestowed a lot of powers to itself. One of these powers was the declaration that the Government of India would nominate only the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court for the position of Chief Justice. Finally, ruled out any possible abuse by the Government or its ability to influence the judiciary. Since then, the convention has been followed without any exceptions. Once appointed, the Chief Justice, he remains in office until his retirement or unless removed by impeachment or by resignation. H. J. Kania was the first chief justice of India, after Indian Independence. He joined office on August 15, 1947 and left office on November 16, 1951, AK Gopalan, M. P. Sastri, Mehr Chand Mahajan, B. K. Mukherjea and Sudhi Ranjan Das were the other Chief Justices of India in the following years.
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