Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna on Wednesday formally recommended to the Centre the name of Justice Bhushan Ramkrishna Gavai as the country’s 52nd CJI.

Justice Gavai will be the second Dalit judge to occupy the country’s highest judicial office, more than 15 years after Justice K.G. Balakrishnan retired on May 12, 2010.

Justice Gavai will be sworn in as CJI on May 14 and will continue in the post till November 23.

Justice Gavai has been part of several constitution benches in the apex court that delivered path-breaking verdicts.

Justice Gavai was part of the bench that had on August 4, 2023, stayed the conviction of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi in a criminal defamation case for the “Modi” surname remark he had made at a public rally in 2019.

The judgment had not only enabled Rahul to contest the 2024 general election but also restored his Parliament membership from Kerala’s Wayanad Lok Sabha constituency after his disqualification following the two-year prison sentence imposed by a Gujarat trial court in the case.

On March 26 this year, a bench of Justices Gavai and Augustine George Masih stayed a controversial Allahabad High Court ruling that had held that grabbing a woman’s breasts and pulling the drawstrings of her pyjama did not amount to rape. The bench had underlined the high court judge’s observations as “totally insensitive” and “inhuman”.

Justice Gavai was part of a five-judge constitution bench that had in December 2023 unanimously upheld the Centre’s decision to abrogate Article 370, which bestowed special status to the erstwhile state of Jammu and Kashmir.

Last month, the CJI-in-waiting led a six-member delegation of Supreme Court judges to strife-hit Manipur on the occasion of the duodecennial celebrations of the establishment of Manipur High Court.

Born on November 24, 1960, at Amravati, Justice Gavai joined the Bar on March 16, 1985, and was the standing counsel for the Municipal Corporation of Nagpur, the Amravati Municipal Corporation and Amravati University. He was an assistant government pleader and additional public prosecutor in Bombay High Court’s Nagpur bench from August 1992 to July 1993.

He was appointed as a government pleader and public prosecutor for the Nagpur bench on January 17, 2000. He was elevated as an additional judge of Bombay High Court on November 14, 2003, and became a permanent judge on November 12, 2005. He was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court on May 24, 2019.