President Ram Nath Kovind nominates former CJI Ranjan Gogoi to Rajya Sabha

Former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi has been nominated for Rajya Sabha on Monday by President Ram Nath Kovind.

The President’s move is unprecedented, so far no Chief Justice has been nominated to the Upper House, usually dominated by celebrities and artistes, by the head of the state. And very few member of the judiciary have crossed over to the space of legislature.

Previously, former Chief Justice Ranganath Mishra had joined the Congress and had become the Member of Parliament. Justice Mishra, who retired in 1991, was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1998 and was there till 2004.

Former Justice Baharul Islam was earlier a Rajya Sabha member before being nominated as Judge of the Gauhati High Court. He was appointed as Supreme Court judge in 1980. He also went on to absolve the then Bihar Chief Minister Jagannath Mishra in the urban cooperative bank scandal. He resigned as Judge and became Rajya Sabha member again.

Justice Ranjan Gogoi had retired in November 2019 after presiding over the top court for around 13 months.

He was one of the four sitting top court judges who had held a first of its kind press conference in January 2018 when Dipak Mishra was the Chief Justice. The had alleged selective "assignment of cases to preferred judges" and "sensitive cases were being allotted to junior judges" by Justice Misra.

As a judge, he had led the constitution bench that had given a monumental verdict on Ayodhya land dispute case. The court had handed the disputed land for a temple and granted 5 acres for the mosque.

He was also part of the bench that gave a clean chit to the government in the case concerning the acquisition of the Rafale aircraft. Saying that there was no occasion to doubt the decision making process in the purchase.

There were also accusations of sexual harassment against him by an employee of the court, but he was cleared by the three member Supreme Court bench that was looking over the matter.

During his farewell speech, Justice Ranjan Gogoi had talked about the lawlessness taking over in ‘some pockets’ of the legal system.

"...The indifference of such stakeholders to the dignity of our institution has reached new lows in the recent past, as rank hooliganism and intimidatory behaviour has become the order of the day in some pockets of our court system," he had said.

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