Senior Advocate PS Narasimha will be the third person directly appointed from Bar to be Chief Justice of India
The Central government has notified the name of of Senior Advocate PS Narasimha for appointment as a judge of Supreme Court of India.
With this, he has become part of a small list of lawyers to be appointed directly to the Supreme Court from the Bar, the ninth such appointment ever to the top court.
The other judges who were appointed directly from the Bar are: Justices SM Sikri, SC Roy, Kuldip Singh, Santosh Hegde, Rohinton Nariman, UU Lalit, L Nageswara Rao and Indu Malhotra.
Narasimha will also hold the rare distinction of being only the third such person to become the Chief Justice of India (CJI).
Only Justice SM Sikri has become the CJI after being elevated from the Bar. Justice Sikri was also the first person to be appointed as a Supreme Court judge directly from the Bar.
The second would be Justice UU Lalit who will come to occupy the post of CJI on August 27, 2022 before retiring on November 8, 2022.
Narasimha will be the third when he occupies the post from October 30, 2027 to May 2028.
PS Narasimha has been in the profession for three decades. He is an expert in environmental jurisprudence and served as the amicus for the Green Bench of the Supreme Court for two years.
I did my graduation from Nizam College in Hyderabad. Some of my friends were shifting to Delhi to prepare for the coveted IAS exam. They told me that the Delhi Law faculty is very good for pursuing law while preparing for IAS. Though I was not keen about getting into IAS, I was interested in doing law while staying in a hostel. That is how I came to Delhi to do law.Senior Advocate PS Narasimha interview with Bar & Bench (2014)
He served as Additional Solicitor General of India from May 2014 to December 2018.
Read our 2014 interview of PS Narasimha here.