President Droupadi Murmu has appointed Justice S. Vaidyanathan, the senior most judge of the Madras High Court, as its Acting Chief Justice (ACJ) from Thursday, since the incumbent ACJ, T. Raja, retired from service on Wednesday.
He is expected to perform the duties of the Chief Justice until the Centre takes a call on the Supreme Court Collegium’s recommendation to appoint Bombay High Court’s ACJ S.V. Gangapurwala as the Chief Justice of Madras High Court. Justice Vaidyanathan was born in Coimbatore on August 17, 1962, and did his schooling at Singaram Pillai High School in Villivakkam in Chennai. He obtained a degree in economics from D.G. Vaishnav College in 1982, and studied at the Madras Law College. He got enrolled as an advocate on August 27, 1986, and practiced in the Madras High Court where his paternal grandfather L.S. Vaidyanathan had served as a Superintendent in the Copyist Section before retiring from service in 1952.
Justice Vaidyanathan’s father V. Subramanian started his life as a shoe polish-seller and grew to be a committed trade unionist and the founder-member of the Madras Commercial Employees Union, the first white-collared employees’ union in 1946.
The ACJ designate was elevated as an additional judge of Madras High Court on October 25, 2013, and became a permanent judge on April 14, 2015.
