Plot against me a closed chapter, press conference didn't affect chance of becoming CJI: Ranjan Gogoi

The unprecedented press conference that he and three other top Supreme Court judges addressed in 2018 did not in any way endanger his chances of becoming the Chief Justice of India, Ranjan Gogoi told CNN-News18. The jurist-turned-lawmaker has also narrated the episode in his recently released autobiography Justice for the Judge.

On January 12, 2018, Justices Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur, J Chelameswar and Kurien Joseph had held a press conference to level allegations against the-then Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra. The judges had termed it an extraordinary event in the history of the institution and alleged that the administration of the Supreme Court was not in order and unless the institution was preserved, democracy would not survive in the country.

"How our chief justice is to be appointed, what are the norms governing it are fairly well-established by long years of experiment, precedents, trial and errors and today what is underground has been set out in that book. The choice of the incoming chief justice, either of the executive or the outgoing chief justices, is severely curtailed except for some reason which I can't visualise and, God forbid, it ever comes into existence the senior-most judge of the Supreme Court has to be nominated as the next chief justice," Gogoi told CNN-News18. "If, for any reason, the outgoing chief justice thinks otherwise, he has to consult his senior-most judges. Then it becomes a collective decision. The government to my mind has no option but to abide by the recommendation of the outgoing CJI. So you have a wonderful system of checks and balances. The outgoing CJI is circumscribed, the government is controlled by the norms and, therefore, I never had any apprehension about being recommended to succeed Justice Dipak Misra by Justice Misra himself."