Well Done, Quietly Done, CJI Sanjiv Khanna
Well Done, Quietly Done, CJI Sanjiv Khanna
Arghya Sengupta
May 13, 2025, 21:53 IST IST
From making top court's internal probe transparent in the Justice Varma case to holding govt depts accountable in an I-T case, to public sharing of judges' assets, he leaves SC an improved institution
Justice Hans Raj Khanna may have been unintentionally prescient when he titled his autobiography Neither Roses Nor Thorns . Four decades later, this epithet aptly describes the tenure of his nephew Sanjiv Khanna as CJI, which ended yesterday. When he took over, his predecessor DY Chandrachud had just demitted office in a blaze of publicity. Some lauded Chandrachud for his openness. Many decried him for what appeared to be unrelenting attention-seeking. CJI Khanna took over and simply stayed mum. There were no media interviews, no publicised temple visits, no significant weekend speeches. His silence was exactly the balm the Supreme Court needed.
Invisibility was the hallmark of Khanna's tenure as CJI. He wrote his judgments competently, not remarkably. His speeches were not usually covered by journalists. Social media platforms did not burst into activity every time he said something. Like a good umpire in a cricket match, he kept himself out of the limelight.
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