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Justice Sanjiv Khanna

Chief Justice of India

Date of Birth : 14-05-1960

Assumed Office : 18-01-2019

Retires on : 13-05-2025

No. of Judgements authored : 117

Judgements:

READ ALSO: ‘Judiciary Is An Integral, Yet Distinct Part Of Governance:’ CJI Sanjiv Khanna

Hon’ble Justice Khanna (CJI ) was born on 14th May, 1960 and belonged to a family of renowned lawyers. His father, Justice Dev Raj Khanna, retired as a judge of the Delhi High Court and his uncle, Justice Hans Raj Khanna, is well known for his famous dissent in the case of A.D.M. Jabalpur v. Shivkant Shukla, which held that the right to life and personal liberty cannot be suspended during an emergency.

Initially, he wanted to fulfill his father’s dreams of becoming a Chartered Accountant but took up the path of his uncle and pursued law from the Campus Law Centre, Delhi. He enrolled as an advocate with the Bar Council of Delhi in 1983.

Thereafter, practiced in the fields of constitutional law, direct taxation, arbitration, commercial law, company law, land law, environmental law and medical negligence. He represented the Delhi Government as an Additional Public Prosecutor in criminal law matters. He was also a Senior Standing Counsel for the Income Tax Department of Delhi for about seven years. In 2004, he was appointed as Delhi’s Standing Counsel for civil law matters at the Delhi High Court. 

Elevated as an additional judge of the Delhi High Court on 25 June 2005 and was designated as  a permanent judge on 20th February 2006.Whilst a judge of the Delhi High Court, he held the position of Chairman/Judge-in-charge, Delhi Judicial Academy, Delhi International Arbitration Centre and the District Court Mediation Centre.

On 18th January 2019, on the recommendation of Chief Justice Ranjan Gogoi-led collegium , Justice Khanna ( Now CJI ) was elevated to the Supreme Court. He has recently assumed charge as the 51^st Chief Justice of India and taken the Oath on 11th November,2024 and is set to retire on 13 May, 2025.

Notable Judgements 

 Association for Democratic Reforms v Election Commission of India (2024), in a Division Bench led by Justice Khanna ( Now CJI ) rejected ADR’s plea seeking 100 percent VVPAT verification of votes cast on Electronic Voting Machines.

Justice Khanna authored the judgement and wrote that he wished to “put on record all safeguards adopted by the ECI to ensure free and fair elections”. While explaining the feature of the EVMs, he stated that the current system “ensures quick, error-free and mischief-free counting of votes.”

In 2024, a five-judge Bench declared the Electoral Bond Scheme unconstitutional. Justice Khanna giving a concurring opinion stated that the right to privacy of donors does not arise if a donation is made through a banking channel.

Their identity is “asymmetrically known to the person and the officers of the bank from where the Bond is purchased.”

He also held that retribution, victimization, and retaliation against donors are wrongs, but they cannot be a justification for the scheme which violates voters’ collective right to information.

READ ALSO: ‘Judiciary Is An Integral, Yet Distinct Part Of Governance:’ CJI Sanjiv Khanna

In 2023, Justice Khanna ( Now CJI ) wrote a concurring opinion in a historic five-judge Bench decision that upheld the validity of the abrogation of Article 370 and gave a Special Status to Jammu and Kashmir. He noted that Article 370 of the Constitution of India was a feature of asymmetric federalism and not an indication of sovereignty, and that its abrogation does not negate the federal structure.

In 2023, in one of the very key judgements ,  Shilpa Sailesh v Varun Sreenivasan, Justice Khanna (Now CJI) authored the majority opinion which held that the Supreme Court has the power to directly grant divorce under Article 142 of the Constitution. Justice Khanna opinionated that the SC can grant a divorce under the grounds of ‘irretrievable breakdown of marriage’ to bring about ‘complete justice’.

In the Revising Fee Scale for Arbitrators decision of 2022, Justice Khanna gave a dissenting opinion on the point that in the arbitral tribunal can fix a reasonable fee in the absence of an arbitration agreement.

Justice Khanna ( CJI ) authored the majority opinion in the 5-judge Bench judgment of CPIO, Supreme Court v Subhash Chandra Agarwal judgement from 2019, popularly known as the RTI judgement. The bench had to decide if subjecting the Office of the Chief Justice (OCJ) to RTI requests curtailed the independence of the judiciary.

Justice Khanna (CJI) opinionated the right to information is not necessarily opposed by judicial independence. It was further held that whether the OCJ should fulfill the RTI requests or not must be decided on case-to-case basis. The judgement also conclusively held that the Court’s Chief Public Information Officer is to decide if the disclosure is in the larger public interest by weighing it against the right to privacy of judges.

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