Not unprecedented, several SC judges before Justice Gogoi got key posts
Justice Ranjan Gogoi is the first former CJI to be nominated by the President himself but is certainly not the only one to get a key political job, thereby inviting the charge of undermining the principles of judicial and ethical propriety.
Former Chief Justice of India (CJI) Ranjan Gogoi is drawing flak for taking up an unsavoury political posting after being in the apex judicial post. (He has been nominated by the President to the Rajya Sabha).
Justice Ranjan Gogoi is the first former CJI to be nominated by the President himself but is certainly not the only one to get a key political job, thereby inviting the charge of undermining the principles of judicial and ethical propriety.
President Ram Nath Kovind nominated Justice Gogoi to the Rajya Sabha on Monday. Prior to this, two Supreme Court judges had been members of the Upper House, including Justices Baharul Islam and Ranganath Mishra.
Justice Islam was a member of the Upper House before he was nominated as the Chief Justice of the Gauhati High Court and as a Supreme Court judge in 1980. Later, he resigned and became a Rajya Sabha member again in 1983.
Meanwhile, Justice Mishra had retired in 1991 and was nominated to the Rajya Sabha in 1998 on a Congress ticket. He stayed a Rajya Sabha MP until 2004.
Besides, several other top court judges have been ‘rewarded’ with key posts following retirement.
Former CJI P. Sathasivam was appointed Governor of Kerala by the Modi government in 2014. Justice M. Hidayatullah, who had retired as CJI in 1970, was appointed the Vice-President of India in 1979, and thus served as the chairman of the Rajya Sabha.
Justice K.S. Hegde had resigned from the top court in 1973 and was elected to the Lok Sabha from Bangalore (South) on a Janata Party ticket. He also served as the Lok Sabha Speaker from 1977 to 1980.
The Indian government had appointed former Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court MC Chagla, who had retired in 1958, as India’s ambassador to the US and then the high commissioner to the UK by then Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. He was later made the education minister and then foreign minister.
Former Supreme Court Judge S Fazal Ali was appointed the Governor of Odisha a month after he retired in May 1952. Another top court judge, Justice Fathima Beevi, was made the Governor of Tamil Nadu in 1997, five years after she retired in 1992.
Justice Adarsh Goel, another Supreme Court judge, was appointed as the head of the National Green Tribunal after his retirement.