Justice Ranjan Gogoi, the first Chief Justice of India from the North East, was sworn-in as the 46th Chief Justice of India by President Ram Nath Kovind on Wednesday. Justice Gogoi takes over from Justice Dipak Mishra who has more controversies  to his credit than many path-breaking judgements. Justice Gogoi started his career as a permanent judge of the Gauhati High Court in February 2001. He was transferred to the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2010 and was appointed Chief Justice there in 2011. He came to the Supreme Court as a judge on April 23, 2012. There had been speculations whether Justice Gogi will be elevated owing to the unprecedented press conference by four judges in January this year. Justice Gogoi was one among the four who raised issues like CJI’s mode of allocation of cases to Supreme Court benches. However, CJI Mishra’s recommendation suggesting Justice Gogoi was accepted by the Law Ministry without any hiccups which pave the way for his being sworn in as CJI. 

Justice Gogoi has many challenges to face in the days to come as he is currently monitoring the update process of the National Register of Citizens, intended to identify illegal migrants in Assam., his home state. He is also dealing with a plea seeking appointment of Lokpal. But an important issue that will require the urgent attention of CJI Gogoi is the mounting arrears of cases at all levels of the judicial hierarchy. Without going into the details, it is enough to point out that there are more than 3.3 crore cases pending in courts across the country, many of them for over 10 years. Given the pile of cases awaiting decisions, setting up more courts and appointing of more judges at all levels with supporting staff is the crying need of the hour.

Justice Gogoi is known to be fiercely independent, upright and a no-nonsense man. We all hope that he will make the system more transparent with little or minimal scope for manipulation in the matter of allocation of cases to his colleague judges, and also keep in view their seniority. In the task ahead, he will need both empathy and imagination.