Chief Justice of India: Former CJI's, Role and Eligibility

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Chief Justice of India: Chief Justice of India is the head of the judiciary system of India. According to Article 124 of the Constitution of India, The president of India appoints The Chief Justice of India. The senior-most judge of the Supreme Court is appointed as the Chief Justice of India. The panel of the Supreme Court consists of 31 judges (one Chief Justice and 30 other Justices). The Chief Justice of India is responsible for the allocation of work to other judges. H J Kania was the first Chief Justice of India, before appointment to the Supreme Court, he served as the Chief Justice of the Federal Court of India. The Current Chief Justice of India is Sharad Arvind Bobde.

List of all the Chief Justices of India

There have been 47 Chief Justices of India since 1950. Sharad Arvind Bobde is the current CJI. The list of all the Chief Justices of India has been given below.

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Chief Justice of India – List	Tenure
H.J Kania	26 January 1950 – 6 November 1951
M. Patanjali Sastri	7 November 1951 – 3 January 1954
Mehr Chand Mahajan	4 January 1954 – 22 December 1954
Bijan Kumar Mukherjea	23 December 1954 – 31 January 1956
Sudhi Ranjan Das	1 February 1956 – 30 September 1959
Bhuvaneshwar Prasad Sinha	1 October 1959 – 31 January 1964
P. B. Gajendragadkar	1 February 1964 – 15 March 1966
Amal Kumar Sarkar	16 March 1966 – 29 June 1966
Koka Subba Rao	30 June 1966 – 11 April 1967
Kailas Nath Wanchoo	12 April 1967 – 24 February 1968
Mohammad Hidayatullah	25 February 1968 – 16 December 1970
Jayantilal Chhotalal Shah	17 December 1970 – 21 January 1971
Sarv Mittra Sikri	22 January 1971 – 25 April 1973
A. N. Ray	26 April 1973 – 27 January 1977
Mirza Hameedullah Beg	29 January 1977 – 21 February 1978
Y. V. Chandrachud	22 February 1978 – 11 July 1985
P. N. Bhagwati	12 July 1985 – 20 December 1986
Raghunandan Swarup Pathak	21 December 1986 – 18 June 1989
Engalaguppe Seetharamaiah Venkataramiah	19 June 1989 – 17 December 1989
Sabyasachi Mukharji	18 December 1989 – 25 September 1990
Ranganath Misra	26 September 1990 – 24 November 1991
Kamal Narain Singh	25 November 1991 – 12 December 1991
Madhukar Hiralal Kania	13 December 1991 – 17 November 1992
Lalit Mohan Sharma	18 November 1992 – 11 February 1993
M. N. Venkatachaliah	12 February 1993 – 24 October 1994
Aziz Mushabber Ahmadi	25 October 1994 – 24 March 1997
J. S. Verma	25 March 1997 – 17 January 1998
Madan Mohan Punchhi	18 January 1998 – 9 October 1998
Adarsh Sein Anand	10 October 1998 – 31 October 2001
Sam Piroj Bharucha	1 November 2001 – 5 May 2002
Bhupinder Nath Kirpal	6 May 2002 – 7 November 2002
Gopal Ballav Pattanaik	8 November 2002 – 18 December 2002
V. N. Khare	19 December 2002 – 1 May 2004
S. Rajendra Babu	2 May 2004 – 31 May 2004
Ramesh Chandra Lahoti	1 June 2004 – 31 October 2005
Yogesh Kumar Sabharwal	1 November 2005 – 13 January 2007
K. G. Balakrishnan	14 January 2007 – 12 May 2010
S. H. Kapadia	12 May 2010 – 28 September 2012
Altamas Kabir	29 September 2012 – 18 July 2013
P. Sathasivam	19 July 2013 – 26 April 2014
Rajendra Mal Lodha	27 April 2014 – 27 September 2014
H. L. Dattu	28 September 2014 – 2 December 2015
T. S. Thakur	3 December 2015 – 3 January 2017
Jagdish Singh Khehar	4 January 2017 – 27 August 2017
Dipak Misra	28 August 2017 – 2 October 2018
Ranjan Gogoi	3 October 2018 – 17 November 2019
Sharad Arvind Bobde	18 November 2019 – Incumbent(till 23 April 2021)

Role of Chief Justice of India

The Chief Justice is responsible for allocation of work to other judges.
The Chief Justice administers the oath of office to the President In the absence of the President and the Vice-President, the Chief Justice sits as the Acting President of India
The Chief Justice is the ex-officio Chancellor to most autonomous law schools in India.
Other judges can refer the matter back to CJI in any case where they require it to be looked into by a larger bench of more judges.

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Eligibility

The individual must be a citizen of India.
The person must not exceed 65 years of age.
In order to be eligible to be Chief Justice of India, the person must serve as a judge at High Court for at least five years or the person should be an advocate in the High court or the Supreme court for at least 10 years or a distinguished jurist.