The Verdictum: Former Chief Justice of India Altamas Kabir

Justice Altamas Kabir enrolled as an advocate in 1973, and went on to practice in the district courts as well as the Calcutta High Court. After nearly two decades of practice, he was appointed as a permanent judge of the Calcutta High Court on August 6, 1990..After a brief stint as Chief Justice of the Jharkhand High Court, Justice Kabir was elevated to the Supreme Court of India on September 9, 2005..Justice Kabir was appointed the 39th Chief Justice of India on September 29, 2012, a post he held for 292 days, before his retirement on July 19, 2013. His tenure at the apex court lasted for seven and a half years, or 2,870 days..The ex-CJI came up against a number of allegations during the last days of his tenure, including the controversy regarding Justice Bhaskar Bhattacharya. The former Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court had alleged that Justice Kabir had blocked his elevation to the Supreme Court..It was also alleged that Justice Kabir took up matters listed before other benches during his tenure, including the Sahara-SEBI matter and the Sunil Mittal 2G case..There was also the controversy in the NEET matter in 2013, just before his retirement. It was alleged that the judgment, which was delivered by him and Justice Anil Dave, was leaked before pronouncement. Justice Kabir denied any knowledge of the leak..Month-wise distribution of rulings.Justice Kabir passed a total of 681 orders and judgments during his tenure in the apex court. Out of these, he made 25 rulings as Chief Justice of India. He authored a whopping 340 judgments in almost eight years; in other words, he authored judgments in half the cases that came before him..His most productive month was February, during which he made 91 rulings, followed by September (73). The months of October and August were his least productive months, during which he made 39 and 44 rulings respectively..Day-wise productivity.His average productivity per day hovered around the 0.25 rulings per day mark. That number went as high as 0.4 in February and plunged to as low as 0.16 during October..Year-wise distribution of rulings.Justice Kabir’s most productive year was 2008, where he passed a massive 179 rulings. To put that in perspective, that is almost one ruling every two days. However, that number dropped to just 50 during the year he was made Chief Justice of India..Bench-wise distribution of rulings.During his tenure of almost eight years, Justice Kabir sat with as many as 33 different judges. His most frequent partner on the bench was Justice Cyriac Joseph, with whom he sat with 147 times. He also sat with Justices Markandey Katju and AR Lakshmanan 82 and 79 times respectively. He was part of a three-judge bench on 62 occasions and part of a Constitution bench 7 times..Case-type distribution of rulings.A majority of cases that came to be heard by Justice Kabir were civil appeals (378). He also heard 138 criminal appeals, 23 writ petitions, 9 contempt petitions and 1 election petition..Notable judgments.Justice Kabir was part of the nine-judge Constitution bench that upheld the basic structure doctrine in the IR Coelho case, famously known as the Ninth Schedule case..In 2009, he heard a writ was filed by Senior Advocate Ram Jethmalani seeking the recovery of Indian black money from Swiss banks..In 2010, he was also part of the bench that held the contempt proceedings initiated against Prashant Bhushan to be maintainable. Bhushan had alleged that Supreme Court judges, including former Chief Justice of India SH Kapadia, were corrupt. That matter is still pending in the apex court..On the topic of Justice Kapadia, former CJI Kabir sat with him to dismiss a curative petition filed by the CBI against a judgment of the Supreme Court acquitting Keshub Mahindra, then Chairman of Union Carbide, in the Bhopal Gas Tragedy case..He was also part of the Constitution bench that heard former Lok Sabha Speaker PA Sangma’s challenge to the presidency of Pranab Mukherjee. By a 3:2 majority, it was held that the complaint did not warrant further investigation. Sitting judges of the apex court Justices Chelameswar and Gogoi wrote dissenting opinions..In the Italian Marines case, Justice Kabir, while holding that the state of Kerala has no jurisdiction to try the case, directed the setting up of a Special Court to try the two marines..In the aftermath of the December 2012 Delhi gang rape, a slew of petitions were filed in the Supreme Court seeking an amendment to the Juvenile Justice Act to try 16 year olds as adults. Though that amendment has been made by Parliament now, Justice Kabir was reluctant to grant the relief back then, ruling that the objective of the Act was “restorative and not retributive”..The last case Justice Kabir decided as a judge of the Supreme Court was the NEET matter. On July 18, 2013, by a majority of 2:1, the Supreme Court set aside the notifications issued by the MCI and the DCI calling for the centralised exam for entry into medical and dental courses..Image taken from here.