Justice Nuthalapati Venkata Ramana was the 48th Chief Justice of India (CJI) and only the second judge from Andhra Pradesh to occupy this position after Justice K. Subba Rao in 1966-67. He was appointed to the High Court of Andhra Pradesh in June 2000 while the Bharatiya Janata Party-led National Democratic Alliance was in power and came to the Supreme Court in February 2014, being among the last judges to be appointed by the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance Government. His tenure as CJI for one year, 124 days began with widespread hope that an extremely strong executive would be held accountable and that the most pressing constitutional issues of our times would be heard and adjudicated upon. However, as is evident now, that did not play out and it ended up being a tenure that promised so much and delivered very little on those fronts.
Institutional malaise
One of the most striking faultlines of Justice Ramana’s leadership came from his own farewell comments. For an outgoing CJI to acknowledge and apologise for the breakdown of the listing and posting of cases speaks to a far deeper institutional malaise. It is curious that he apologised for not paying much attention to the listing process and it is just as curious that Justice U.U. Lalit, the incoming CJI, immediately identified reforming the listing process as an urgent area of concern. The stark contrast in prioritising the listing process for course correction presents a very odd picture for those of us who watch the Court from outside. While this might seem insignificant to laypersons, it is exactly these listing and allocation processes that decide what gets decided in the Supreme Court and who decides it.
