Justice V Kameswar Rao took oath as Chief Justice of the Patna High Court on Sunday, ending a two-month spell in which the court functioned under an acting Chief Justice. He is the fourth permanent Chief Justice the court has had in a year, and he takes charge of a bench running ten judges short of its sanctioned strength.
Patna: Justice V Kameswar Rao was sworn in as the 49th Chief Justice of the Patna High Court on Sunday, September 13, 2026, with the oath of office administered by Bihar Governor Lt. Gen. Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd) at a ceremony held at Lok Bhavan.
The ceremony was attended by Chief Minister Samrat Choudhary along with judges of the High Court, members of the Bar and other dignitaries. Justice Rao moves to Patna from the Delhi High Court, where he had been sitting since his repatriation in July 2025.
How the appointment came about
The Supreme Court Collegium headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant recommended Justice Rao’s appointment as Chief Justice of the Patna High Court at its meeting on August 6, 2026, as part of a set of recommendations covering Chief Justices for several High Courts. The Central Government notified the appointment on September 5, 2026, in a batch of notifications for Chief Justices at eight High Courts.
Until Sunday, the court had been functioning under Justice Sudhir Singh, who had been appointed to discharge the duties of Chief Justice under Article 223 of the Constitution following the retirement of Justice Meenakshi Madan Rai on July 11, 2026.
Who is Justice Kameswar Rao
Born on August 7, 1965, Justice Valluri Kameswar Rao took his graduation in Geography with honours from Delhi University in 1987 and his law degree from the same university in 1990. His family originally hails from Andhra Pradesh. He enrolled with the Bar Council of Delhi in March 1991 and built a practice before the Supreme Court, the Delhi High Court and the Principal Bench of the Central Administrative Tribunal at New Delhi, also appearing before the Madras High Court and the circuit bench of the Calcutta High Court at Port Blair.
Service law and administrative law formed a substantial part of that practice, a background reflected in his designation as a Senior Advocate by the Delhi High Court in January 2010. He was elevated as an Additional Judge of the Delhi High Court in April 2013 and confirmed as a Permanent Judge on March 18, 2015.
In 2024 he was transferred to the Karnataka High Court, where he went on to serve as Acting Chief Justice from May 2025 until his repatriation to the Delhi High Court on July 21, 2025. That earlier stint gives him prior experience of running a High Court, which the Patna assignment will draw on.
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A court that has changed hands four times in a year
The more striking feature of this appointment is the sequence it follows. Since September 2025, the Patna High Court has had four permanent Chief Justices, with acting arrangements filling the gaps between them.
Justice P B Bajanthri was sworn in as the 46th Chief Justice in September 2025 and demitted office the following month. Justice Sangam Kumar Sahoo took charge as the 47th Chief Justice in January 2026 and retired on June 4, 2026. Justice Meenakshi Madan Rai, the 48th, was sworn in on June 5, 2026 and retired on July 11, 2026, a tenure of about five weeks. Justice Sudhir Singh has stepped in as acting Chief Justice twice during this period, most recently for the two months preceding Sunday’s ceremony.
Measured against that, Justice Rao’s tenure is comparatively substantial. He attains the age of 62 on August 7, 2027, which gives him roughly eleven months in office, the longest continuous stretch any Chief Justice of the court will have had since 2025.
What he inherits
At the time the Collegium made its recommendation in August 2026, the Patna High Court was functioning with 43 judges against a sanctioned strength of 53, a shortfall of ten. That position had already improved on the year before, the Centre having appointed seven new judges to the court in June 2026.
On the caseload, the most recent authoritative figures placed before Parliament, which relate to June 2024, showed just over two lakh cases pending before the High Court, split between roughly 1.08 lakh civil and 92,000 criminal matters, alongside a district judiciary backlog in Bihar of over 36 lakh cases. Those numbers are now more than two years old, but they indicate the scale of the institution Justice Rao takes charge of.
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Why it matters
The office of a High Court Chief Justice is not merely ceremonial. The Chief Justice is master of the roster, chairs the administrative committees, leads the court’s own collegium in recommending candidates for elevation, and sets the institutional agenda on arrears, infrastructure and the district judiciary. Each of those functions rewards continuity and suffers from its absence.
A Chief Justice with a tenure of weeks can do little beyond keeping the machinery running. Roster reorganisation, arrears committees and recommendations for judicial appointments all take months to move through the system, and each change at the top tends to reset them. The pattern at Patna is not unique. A count in July 2026 put seven High Courts across the country under acting Chief Justices at the same time, with several more Chief Justices due to retire before the end of the year, which points to a structural timing problem in how appointments are sequenced rather than anything peculiar to Bihar.
The Supreme Court’s memorandum of procedure contemplates that the process of filling a Chief Justice vacancy should begin about a month before the incumbent retires. In practice the gap between a retirement and a successor taking oath has frequently run to weeks or months, with Article 223 acting appointments bridging the interval. Whether the recent run of short tenures at Patna produces a more settled arrangement is the question worth watching over the next year.
For the Bar at Patna, the immediate interest will be in how the new Chief Justice approaches listing practice and the allocation of subject matter across benches, the two levers that most directly affect practitioners. His background in service and administrative law, and his prior experience of heading the Karnataka High Court in an acting capacity, are the clearest indicators available at this stage.
Name: Justice Valluri Kameswar Rao, 49th Chief Justice of the Patna High Court
Sworn in: September 13, 2026, at Lok Bhavan, Patna
Oath administered by: Bihar Governor Lt. Gen. Syed Ata Hasnain (Retd)
Collegium recommendation: August 6, 2026 | Centre’s notification: September 5, 2026
Predecessor: Justice Meenakshi Madan Rai (retired July 11, 2026); Justice Sudhir Singh served as Acting Chief Justice in the interim
Due to retire: August 2027