Sanjiv Khanna was on Thursday appointed as the next Chief Justice of India, the Union Ministry of Law and Justice said.
Khanna, the second-most senior judge of the Supreme Court, will assume office on November 11, succeeding Chief Justice DY Chandrachud, who is set to retire on November 10.
“In exercise of the powers conferred by clause (2) of Article 124 of the Constitution of India, the President is pleased to appoint Shri Justice Sanjiv Khanna, Judge of the Supreme Court, to be the Chief Justice of India with effect from 11 November 2024,” the ministry said in a notification.
Article 124 (2) of the Constitution grants the president the power to appoint judges in the Supreme Court.
Earlier this month, Chandrachud wrote to the ministry proposing Khanna as his successor. The letter is part of the convention on the appointment of the top court’s chief justices.
Khanna, who will become the 51st chief justice of the Supreme Court, will have a tenure of six months before he retires on May 13.
Khanna enrolled as an advocate with the Bar Council of Delhi in 1983. He practiced at the district courts at the Tis Hazari complex before moving to the Delhi High Court, where he argued in several criminal cases as an additional public prosecutor.
Khanna became an additional judge of the High Court in 2005 and was elevated to the permanent position a year later.
He was elevated as a Supreme Court judge in January 2019. He never served as the chief justice of any High Court.
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