JUSTICE NK SINGH
Date of Birth : 01-03-1963
Assumed Office : 18-07-2024
Retires on: 29-02-2028
Justice Nongmeikapam Kotiswar Singh was born on March 1, 1963, in Imphal, Manipur. His father, the late N. Ibotombi Singh, was a distinguished judge of the Gauhati High Court and the first Advocate General of Manipur.
Justice Singh completed his early education at Ramakrishna Mission Vidyapith, Purulia, West Bengal, and pursued a Pre-University course in Science at St. Anthony’s College, Shillong. He graduated in Political Science from Kirori Mal College, Delhi University, in 1983, followed by an LL.B. degree from the Campus Law Centre, Delhi University, in 1986.
Enrolling with the Delhi Bar Council in 1986, Justice Singh later transferred his enrollment to the Bar Council of Assam, Nagaland, Meghalaya, Manipur, Tripura, Mizoram, Arunachal Pradesh, and Sikkim. In 1992, he was selected for the Commonwealth Young Lawyers Course under the University of London.
Justice Singh practiced in civil, criminal, constitutional, and service law across various courts, including the Supreme Court of India, the Gauhati High Court, the Central Administrative Tribunal, and district courts.
On November 3, 2007, he was appointed Advocate General for the state of Manipur, a position he held until his elevation to the judiciary. He was designated Senior Counsel by the Gauhati High Court on March 31, 2008.
Justice Singh was elevated as an Additional Judge of the Gauhati High Court on October 17, 2011, and became a Permanent Judge on November 7, 2012. When the High Court of Manipur was established in 2013, he was among its first judges, transferring from Gauhati. During his tenure at the Manipur High Court, he served as Acting Chief Justice twice: July 1, 2017, to February 8, 2018, and from February 23, 2018, to March 17, 2018.
In May 2018, Justice Singh participated in the World Congress on Justice for Children at UNESCO headquarters in Paris. Later that year, he was part of a select team of eight High Court judges attending a specialized training program on counter-terrorism in Washington, D.C., and Orange County, California.
Justice Singh returned to the Gauhati High Court on October 11, 2018, serving until February 14, 2023, including two terms: Acting Chief Justice: from August 21, 2020, to January 9, 2021, and from June 22, 2022, to February 12, 2023. On February 15, 2023, he took oath as the Chief Justice of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court.
Appointment to the Supreme Court
On July 11, 2024, the Supreme Court Collegium, led by Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud, recommended Justice Singh’s elevation to the Supreme Court, highlighting him as the first judge from Manipur to achieve this milestone. The Union government confirmed his appointment, along with Justice R. Mahadevan of Tamil Nadu, on July 16, 2024.
Notable Judgments
- Sital Mandal v. Union of India (2022): Justice Singh, part of a bench with Justice Nani Tagia, ruled that once a foreign tribunal declares a person to be Indian, their nationality cannot be questioned in subsequent proceedings.
- Haidar Ali v. Union of India (2022): Justice Singh held that failure to establish a link with all relatives cannot disqualify a person from registration under Assam’s National Register of Citizens (NRC).
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