Mumbai: The Supreme Court Collegium on Thursday recommended elevation of Justice Bhushan Gavai of the Bombay High Court to the Apex Court. The recommenda-tion is, however, yet to be approved by the Union government.If the recommendation is accepted, it would be over a decade since the Apex Court had a judge from the Scheduled Caste category. Further, if Justice Gavai’s nomination is approved, then he will become CJI in 2025, as per the seniority list.
This would make Gavai the second Dalit CJI of the country.In fact, his caste is one of the prime grounds for his elevation, as at present there is no representation of the SC/ST category in the top court. This is a mandatory representa-tion in every court. “On his appointment, the Supreme Court bench will have a judge belonging to the Scheduled Caste category after about a decade,” states the resolution moved by the Collegium headed by Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi. Justice Gavai ranked eighth in the all-India seniority list (of HC judges) and he is the second senior most judge in the Bombay HC after Chief Justice Pradeep Nandrajog and Justice Satyaranjan Dharmadhikari.
Apart from these, Justice Gavai is also junior to Justices Abhay Oka and Vijaya Tahilramani, who are pre-sently serving as the Chief Justices of Karnataka HC and Madras HC, respectively. To ensure there is no controversy over the seniority, the Collegium clarified, “His recommendation, in no way, is to be misconstrued to mean that three senior-most Judges from the Bombay High Court (two of whom are serving as Chief Justices) are less suitable than Justice Gavai.”
Justice Gavai was born on November 24, 1960. He enrolled at the Bar on March 16, 1985, and practised at the Bombay High Court, predominantly at the Nagpur Bench. He served as Assistant Government Pleader, Additional Public Prosecutor and subsequently Public Prosecutor. He was appointed additional judge of the Bombay High Court on November 14, 2003. Justice Gavai is the son of RS Gavai, a former Member of Parliament of Rajya Sabha. He represented the Republican Party of India (Gavai faction) and was the former Governor of Bihar.
