First of the four, including CJI Chandrachud, who would retire this year
NEW DELHI:
Justice Aniruddha Bose
, often referred to by CJI DY Chandrachud as a perfect Bengali ‘bhadralok’ whose intellectual brilliance matched with his sartorial elegance off the court by dressing in crisply ironed dhoti and punjabi, retired on Wednesday after a five year tenure as judge of the
Supreme Court
.
At the end of the ceremonial bench proceedings where the retiring judge shares courtroom number one dais with CJI, attorney general R Venkarataramani, solicitor general Tushar Mehta, senior advocates A M Singhvi, Dushyant Dave and Sukumar Pattjoshi were effusive in their praise of Justice Bose for his sense of justice, intellectual prowess, and the old traditional charm which he brought into the courtroom.
CJI Chandrachud said given Justice Bose’s intellectual capacity and the wide knowledge he acquired through varied reading; we have decided, and he has graciously accepted the assignment to head the
National Judicial Academy
at Bhopal to train judges of both trial courts and constitutional courts.
“Well-read, extraordinarily equitable, gentle to the core, compassionate and a judge with an unending desire to give justice to the last person in the queue. Justice Bose is only retiring from the SC. Unanimous vote of the judges is that there is no better person than academician-jurist Justice Bose to head NJA,” the CJI said.
While AG said Justice Bose was adept in the art of ‘stealing the heart’ of litigants and lawyers alike, Mehta said despite being an intellectual giant, Justice Bose, a perfect gentleman, never threw the weight of that knowledge on advocates. Singhvi said Justice Bose was a voracious reader of books on diverse topics and was endowed with a disarming smile that charmingly synced with the old traditional happy demeanour he brought into the courtroom. Dave said it was a joy to appear before Justice Bose.
Justice Bose graduated in Commerce from St Xavier’s College, Kolkata, did his LLB from Surendranath Law College, and enrolled as an advocate in Calcutta HC in 1985. He was appointed a permanent HC judge in January 2004 and became Jharkhand HC chief justice in August 2018. He was appointed as a judge of the SC in May 2019.
Apart from Justice Bose, there would be three more retirements this year in the SC – Justice Ajjikuttira Somaiah Bopanna on May 19, Justice Hima Kohli on September 1 and CJI Chandrachud on November 10. Justice Sanjiv Khanna would become the 51st CJI on November 11.
