New Delhi: The Supreme Court administration has asked the Union Ministry of Urban Development to initiate the process of getting the official residence of Chief Justice of India (CJI) vacated that is at present occupied by former CJI DY Chandrachud, ThePrint has learnt.
In a letter written 1 July, the top court administration has urged the ministry to take steps in terms of the procedure so that the bungalow can be reverted to the Supreme Court’s housing pool.
This bungalow located on 5, Krishna Menon Marg was allotted to Justice Chandrachud when he took over as the CJI in November 2022.
Thereafter, the CJI moved into this official residence more than a year after he assumed the top judicial office. However, when he retired in November 2024, he wrote to his successor Justice Sanjiv Khanna, seeking time till 30 April to vacate the premises, which was accepted.
Under Rule 3B of the Supreme Court Judges Rules, 2022, a retired CJI can retain his bungalow for up to six months post-retirement. The SC’s letter to the central ministry’s housing and urban affairs department points out that the time allowed to Justice Chandrachud expired 30 June.
Sources in the Supreme Court told ThePrint that the letter was sent after CJI B.R.Gavai gave his consent for it. The letter was written in view of the shortage of accommodation for official judges and the fact that the top court is working with full strength with all 33 positions occupied. The ministry is yet to respond to the top court’s letter.
Former CJI Chandrachud told ThePrint that he has got government accommodation, on rental basis, for a year and is ready to move into that bungalow. However, on account of incomplete civil work, he has not been able to do so.
“At best, it will take another 10 to 15 days. Renovation work of that bungalow is not in my hands. It’s being done by the Public Works Department (PWD), which is a central government body,” he said.
When the contractor commenced with the repair work, he was assured that the work would be completed by 30 June. “There are unforeseen events that are not in his control, so the work has got a bit delayed,” the former CJI said.
The top court, he said, knew about the spillover of this repair work as one of its registrars visited in June last week to check with him about the status of his new accommodation. “I told him that the work was going on at a fast pace, but then there may be a delay because of events that were not within the contractor’s control,” the former CJI explained.
He further said that he is having problems finding a suitable private accommodation for his family that includes two daughters with special needs. For one of them, the family has set-up an ICCU at home and both are wheelchair-bound. “My daughters have severe comorbidities and genetic problems—particularly nemaline myopathy, for which they are being treated by specialists at AIIMS,” he said.
Therefore, the private homes that the family has searched so far are not well-equipped to facilitate their free movement inside the premises. “This has impacted our plans to immediately move into a private accommodation,” the former CJI said.
Justice Chandrachud further said that when he joined the Supreme Court in May 2016, he stayed in the Uttar Pradesh Sadan for six months, before he moved into the official residence on Tughlaq Road.
“This official bungalow allotted to me was a transit accommodation, and I continued to live here till November 2023. This period also covered the first year for my CJI’s tenure. As a judge of the Supreme Court, we can change our official accommodation twice,” he explained.
However, he said, the family continued to live in the Tuglaq Road bungalow out of choice, even though it’s a transit accommodation and not a regular one. “I could have moved into bigger bungalows twice, but preferred not to do so because the family was settled in the Tughlaq Road one despite it being a smaller place,” CJI Chandrachud added.
The family continued to live there even after Justice Chandrachud took oath to the CJI’s post. However, in November 2023, after experiencing that the demands of a CJI’s office were higher, the family moved to the official residence on 5, Krishna Menon Marg.
A week before his retirement in November 2024, Justice Chandrachud wrote to his successor, Justice Sanjiv Khanna about permitting him to go back to the Tughlaq Road bungalow. This bungalow had remained unoccupied after Justice Chandrachud vacated it.
In response, Justice Khanna asked the former CJI to continue living in the Krishna Menon Marg premises and that he would prefer to allot the Tughlaq Road bungalow to another judge.
On 28 April, Justice Chandrachud again wrote to CJI Khanna seeking time till 30 June, citing difficulty in finding a suitable accommodation that would also cater to the needs of his two daughters.
Meanwhile, the government agreed to allot an official accommodation to him on a monthly rental basis. Since this house, which was earlier in the housing pool of the Supreme Court, but had later gone back to the central government, was not in use for a long time, the PWD was assigned the task to carry out its repairs.
Justice Chandrachud said that in May, he had informed CJI Gavai about the government’s decision to give him a rental accommodation on temporary basis and that the same provided him some breathing space to find a suitable accommodation for the family.
This is not the first time that a former judge of the Supreme Court has retained the possession of an official accommodation beyond the end of term.
In the past, there have been judges, including former CJIs N.V.Ramana, U.U Lalit as well as Justices Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Hima Kohli and Arun Mishra, who lived in official accommodation months after demitting office. However, it is subject to the serving CJI’s discretion.
Justice Mishra had lived in a bungalow that was part of the Supreme Court housing pool while he served as the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) chairman for five years. This was even as he was not entitled to a Type-VIII bungalow, the category earmarked for only serving Supreme Court judges.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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