An emotional Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud wiped his tears as fellow judges spoke about him in front of a packed courtroom number 1 on Friday. His last working day saw judges recalling his love for samosas, and the compliments the latter has received from international judges on his good looks and charm. A senior lawyer showed him a painting of the CJI made by his son. Attorney General R Venkataramani even claimed that if he proposed dancing on the CJI’s retirement, most would vote in favour.
Justice DY Chandrachud was, in many ways, destined to head the top court of the country. His father, Justice Yeshwant Vishnu Chandrachud was the longest serving CJI, from 1978 to 1985. Justice DY Chandrachud was designated as a senior advocate, appointed as an additional solicitor general of India, and was elevated as a judge—all before he turned 41. From there, it was only a matter of time before he made his way to the Supreme Court in 2016, and took over as the Chief Justice of India in November 2022— giving him a two-year long tenure.
In his eight-year-long stint at the Supreme Court, he was a part of over 1,200 benches, and authored almost 600 judgments. Several of his verdicts early on, and his reinforcement of individual rights in public speeches resulted in him being crowned a ‘liberal messiah’ who would steer the Supreme Court on a path of executive resistance. However, his tenure as the CJI has left several of his critics confused, and many others divided over his legacy that Justice Chandrachud himself remains anxious about. In any case, everything he said and did, inside the courtroom and outside it, made it to not just newspapers but also drawing rooms.
His final few days as the CJI also kept him in the news for his work inside the courtroom, as well as his statements outside. From his statement that he “sat before a deity and told him he needs to find a solution” to the Ram Janmabhoomi dispute, to the slew of important Constitutional bench decisions that were delivered one after the other in his last week—CJI Chandrachud and his court dominated news headlines throughout.
And that is why Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud is ThePrint’s Newsmaker of the Week.
I heart DYC
Even before he assumed charge as the CJI, Justice Chandrachud’s fanfare was legendary—even outside the legal community.
A law meme page on Instagram made cheesy ‘Playdate’ and ‘Talking to the moon’ edits on him, with videos of him speaking emphatically and smiling at the audience in slow motion. Arguably, this is the first time that a CJI saw such fanfare across generations. A comment on one such reel said, ‘D in DYC stands for Daddy’ — a quintessentially Gen Z compliment reserved for only a select few.
An e-commerce website called ‘Frankly Wearing’ has also been selling ‘I Love DYC’ t-shirts for years now. The design—or rather declaration of love for the outgoing CJI—is also available on hoodies, crop tops, and sweatshirts.
This online spectacle can be traced to several factors—his eloquence, intellect and several of his verdicts.
He won appreciation for his verdict in the 2017 right to privacy case, when he not only upheld the right but also overruled his father’s controversial ADM Jabalpur case, calling it “seriously flawed”.
After that, 2018 turned out to be a year that affirmed Justice Chandrachud’s celebrity judge status. In March 2018, he was part of the bench that decided the Shafin Jahan case, which set aside a Kerala High Court order annulling the marriage of Hadiya to Shafin Jahan, whom she had married after converting to Islam— a marriage that led to endless debate across the country.
In September 2018, he was the sole dissenting judge in the 2018 Aadhaar verdict, ruling the law to be constitutional owing to how the law was passed as a “Money Bill”. The same month, he was a part of the Supreme Court bench that decriminalised same-sex relations between consenting adults under Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code. This judgment also relied on Justice Chandrachud’s opinion in the right to privacy case, in which he asserted that “sexual orientation is an essential attribute of privacy”. The Sabarimala judgment in September 2018 also won him additional brownie points.
Also read: Making sense of DY Chandrachud’s legacy isn’t easy. It’s complicated, confounding
Vegan, yogi ‘hermit’
Early on, Justice Chandrachud had established himself as a liberal defender of individual and human rights with his verdicts. However, this perception was set to be broken.
Justice Chandrachud went on to be a part of the five-judge bench that wrote a unanimous, but anonymous judgment in the Ram Janmabhoomi case. While the author of the judgment was not named, reports claimed that it bore “Chandrachud’s imprint”. The court’s judgment on Article 370 of the Constitution, by a bench led by CJI Chandrachud, was called “ominously anti-federal”.
Last year, the controversy over listing of cases also reared its ugly head. Questions being raised over assignment of several politically sensitive cases, including the bail application filed by former Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student Umar Khalid in the Delhi riots ‘larger conspiracy’ case, petitions challenging provisions of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, 1967 (UAPA), and the bail application filed by Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) leader Satyendar Jain.
It has also been pointed out by experts that while the collegium headed by CJI Chandrachud has recommended as many as 17 judges to the Supreme Court, no woman judge has been elevated in the last two years.
Meanwhile, Chandrachud’s press interactions and active public life revealed more about his personality.
The Supreme Court has described a judge as the one who lives and behaves like a hermit, having no desire or aspiration, having shed it through penance. The 1997 document titled Restatement of Values of Judicial Life also asserts that “a judge should practice a degree of aloofness consistent with the dignity of his office”.
However, CJI Chandrachud redefined a judge. Every public statement of his revealed a different side of his personality. A summation of it all presented before the commonfolk a vegan, yoga practicing, temple-visiting judge, who celebrated Ganesh Chaturthi with Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The legacy
“With his dissent in Aadhaar, Justice DY Chandrachud has established his leadership as a true liberal in the Supreme Court of India,” senior advocate Indira Jaising was quoted by a news outlet in September 2018. Six years later, the same eminent lawyer declared the outgoing CJI ‘The New Right Liberal’. And there is no better way to sum up Justice Chandrachud’s perceived image over his time as a judge—expectations were shattered, opinions were polarised and his fans were confused, having to praise him for a few judgments, while condemning him for others.
Justice Chandrachud’s legacy does not begin at him, and certainly won’t stop at him. His father was a chief justice, and both his sons, Abhinav Chandrachud and Chintan Chandrachud are also lawyers.
Apart from his judgments, Justice Chandrachud does seem to have left behind several permanent footprints in the Supreme Court— an Ambedkar statue, a technology-savvy environment, the ‘mitti cafe’ managed entirely by persons with disabilities, an ‘Ayush Holistic Wellness Centre’, a Handbook on combating gender stereotypes, gender-neutral washrooms, live streaming of court proceedings, a new logo and a new Goddess of Justice without a blindfold.
Throughout his tenure as a judge, he has been keenly watched. And he seemed to be aware of this, when he expressed his anxiety over how his tenure would be judged.
“As my tenure is coming to an end, my mind has been heavily preoccupied with fears and anxieties about the future and the past. I find myself pondering over questions such as: Did I achieve everything I set out to do? How will history judge my tenure? Could I have done things differently? What legacy will I leave for future generations of judges and legal professionals?” he said at an event in Bhutan last month.
The jury is still out on his tenure as a judge. All eyes are now set on his post-retirement term, because history does judge judges on what they do after they retire.
(Edited by Ratan Priya)
DY Chandrachud’s real legacy will be the protective umbrella he provided to the TMC and Ms. Mamata Banerjee. With his departure from the SC, Ms. Banerjee has lost a true and genuine friend.
Mr. Chandrachud protected the Bengal govt from all sorts of embarrassing corruption cases – be it the SSC appointments or the RG Kar case. The list is quite long and Mamata Banerjee will be indebted to him forever.