Justice UU Lalit Touches His Father's Feet After Swearing in as 49th Chief Justice of India | WATCH

Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, who was administered oath by President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday at a brief ceremony held at the Rashtrapati Bhavan, touched his father’s feet. The CJI’s 90-year-old father, Umesh Ranganath Lalit, served as a high court judge after a long career as an advocate in his home state Maharashtra.

Lalit’s wife Amita Lalit, who runs a school in Noida, along with their two sons, Harshad and Shreeyash, were also present. Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar, Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Union ministers were there too at the ceremony. Justice Lalit’s predecessor, Justice N V Ramana, was also present.

In August 2014, he was made Supreme Court judge directly from a lawyer. He is only the second such judge to become CJI. Lalit will be the sixth head of the Indian judiciary to have a tenure of less than 100 days. Lalit will demit office on November 8 with a tenure of 74 days.

Supreme Court judges retire on attaining the age of 65 while high court judges retire at 62. Justice Kamal Narain Singh, who was the CJI between November 25, 1991 and December 12, 1991, had a tenure of 18 days.

Justice S Rajendra Babu had a tenure of 30 days as the chief justice of India between May 2, 2004 and May 31, 2004. Justice J C Shah had a tenure of 36 days when he was the CJI between December 17, 1970 and January 21, 1971.

Speaking at a function organised a day ago by the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) to bid farewell to outgoing CJI N V Ramana, Justice Lalit said he has always believed that role of the top court is to lay down law with clarity and the best possible way to do it is to have larger benches as early as possible so that the issues get clarified immediately. “So, we will strive hard to say that yes, we will always have at least one constitution bench functioning all throughout the year,” he said.

Justice Lalit said one of the areas in which he intends to work is about the listing of cases before the constitution benches and matters which are specially referred to three-judge benches. On the issue of listing of matters, he said, “.I must assure you that we will strive hard to make the listing as simple, as clear, and as transparent as possible”.

Regarding mentioning urgent matters, Justice Lalit said he would certainly look into it. “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,” he said.

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