Who is Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, in line to become the next Chief Justice of India?

Chief Justice of India NV Ramana on Thursday recommended the name of Justice Uday Umesh Lalit, the second senior judge of the Supreme Court, as his successor. The incumbent Chief Justice of India will retire on August 26.

Justice Lalit, who hails from Maharashtra, will have a short term as the 49th Chief Justice of India as he will remain in office till November 8, 2022.

After his appointment, Justice Lalit will become the second CJI to be directly elevated to the top court Bench from the Bar, after Justice SM Sikri, who served as the 13th CJI in 1971.

Justice UU Lalit was born on November 9, 1957, to UR Lalit, who was a senior advocate and served as a judge at the Delhi High Court. He studied at the Government Law College, Mumbai, and specialised in criminal law.

Justice UU Lalit enrolled as an advocate in June 1983 and practiced at the Bombay High Court till December 1985 before shifting to Delhi in January 1986. Between 1986 and 1992, he worked with former Attorney-General Soli J Sorabjee. Justice Lalit was designated as senior advocate by the Supreme Court in April 2004.

 

He has appeared as amicus curiae in several matters and served as a member of the Supreme Court of India Legal Services Committee for two terms. On August 13, 2014, he was appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court of India. Justice Lalit became the executive chairman of the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) in May 2021.

During his tenure, Justice Lalit appeared in a number of leading criminal cases including the one against Pune businessman Hasan Ali Khan, who was accused of money laundering, actor Salman Khan in the black buck poaching case, and for former Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh’s corruption case.

He had also represented Home Minister Amit Shah in two high-profile cases, including the alleged fake encounters of Sohrabuddin Sheikh and Tulsiram Prajapati in Gujarat.

He was appointed by the Supreme Court as a special public prosecutor for the CBI in the 2G scam.

In 2014, Justice Lalit recused himself from hearing the plea of Yakub Menon seeking to review the Supreme Court’s order that upheld his capital punishment in the 1993 Mumbai serial blasts case.

The following year, Justice Lalit recused himself from hearing a petition seeking a fair trial in the 2008 Malegaon blasts. Earlier, Justice Lalit had defended one accused in the case.

In 2016, he recused himself from hearing a plea seeking probe into the disappearance of a key prosecution witness in the Asaram Bapu trial.

Justice Lalit also recused himself from hearing former Haryana Chief Minister Om Prakash Chautala’s plea in the teachers’ recruitment scam case.

In 2019, he recused himself from the Constitution Bench appointed for hearing the Ayodhya Title Dispute case.

Justice Lalit has also been part of several landmark verdicts, one of which came in August 2017. The judgment passed by a five-judge Constitution Bench ruled the practice of divorce through instant ‘triple talaq’ amongst Muslims as illegal and unconstitutional.

In another judgment in 2020, a bench headed by Justice Lalit ruled in favour of the royal family of Travancore, conferring onto it, the rights to administer and manage the historic Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Kerala.

In a judgment that overruled two high court verdicts, a bench headed by Justice Lalit ruled that touching private parts of a child's body, or any act involving physical contact, with "sexual intent" amounts to "sexual assault" under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.