President Droupadi Murmu administered the oath to Justice Surya Kant as India's 53rd Chief Justice at Rashtrapati Bhavan on November 24, 2025. He pledged to uphold the Constitution and discharge his duties faithfully. His tenure will last until February 2027.
Justice Surya Kant took the oath on November 24, 2025, administered by President Droupadi Murmu, succeeding Justice B.R. Gavai, the 52nd Chief Justice who demitted office on November 23. The oath was taken in Hindi, pledging to preserve the Constitution and faithfully execute duties.
The ceremony at Rashtrapati Bhavan was attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Vice President C.P. Radhakrishnan, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, Defence Minister Rajnath Singh, Home Minister Amit Shah, Law Minister Arjun Ram Meghwal, Health Minister J.P. Nadda, Commerce Minister Piyush Goyal, among other central ministers. Chief Justices from Bhutan, Malaysia, Nepal, and Sri Lanka were also present.
Born on February 10, 1962, in Hisar, Haryana, Justice Kant graduated from Hisar in 1981 and earned his LLB from Maharishi Dayanand University, Rohtak, in 1984. He secured first class first in his Master's in law from Kurukshetra University in 2011. He began practicing at Hisar district court and moved to Chandigarh in 1985 for the Punjab and Haryana High Court.
He became Haryana's youngest Advocate General on July 7, 2000, and was designated a senior advocate in March 2001. Elevated as a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court on January 9, 2004, he served as Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court from October 2018. He was appointed a Supreme Court judge on May 24, 2019.
Key judgments include the abrogation of Article 370, declaring the electoral bonds scheme unconstitutional, the Pegasus spyware case, suspension of the sedition law, revision of Bihar's electoral rolls, reinstatement of a woman sarpanch, and reserving one-third seats for women in bar associations. In a media interaction on Saturday, he stated, 'One is arrears in SC. Other is arrears on pan-India basis, in High Courts or District Courts. I have to address that also.' He identified reducing the backlog as his priority.
His tenure spans nearly 15 months, ending on February 9, 2027.
