Justice Ranjan Gogoi was sworn in as the 46th Chief Justice of India on Wednesday. Gogoi took oath at the Rashtrapati Bhavan in New Delhi in the presence of President Ram Nath Kovind.
Gogoi succeeds Dipak Misra who, just in the past month, delivered judgements on several crucial cases including Aadhaar, Section 377 and the entry of women into Sabarimala.
Here's what you need to know about the new Chief Justice of India:
— Gogoi has been a judge in the Supreme Court since 2012.
— He was the chief justice of the Punjab and Haryana high court between 2011 and 2012.
— He has also practiced in the Gauhati High Court in Assam.
— Gogoi has presided over important cases including the Arushi Talwar murder case, reports LiveMint. The report says that he is still heading a bench that will hear the CBI's plea against the acquittal of Arushi's parents Rajesh and Nupur Talwar.
— The LiveMint report added that Gogoi was also heading the bench in the Maran brothers case.
— Gogoi was part of a bench in 2014 that had ordered the Centre and the state government of Assam to complete the National Register of Citizens (NRC) in three years.
— Gogoi will also preside over cases related to the NRC in Assam. This has been questioned by some since Gogoi himself is from the state. Senior advocate Pradip Dutta Roy had written to former CJI Misra saying, "Gogoi's association with the state would 'create ample doubt in the minds of other ethnicities about the delivery of the judgment'."
— The Ayodhya case, the hearing for which begins later this month, will also be one of the biggest cases that he will handle during his tenure.
— Gogoi was one of the four judges who held an unprecedented press conference, where they had said that democracy was in danger. The judges has spoken about the problems in the way the Supreme Court was being run in the aftermath of the Justice Loya case.
— Gogoi was born on 18 November 1954 in Assam's Dibrugarh. His father Keshab Chandra Gogoi was the chief minister of Assam in 1982.