Govt initiates process to appoint seniormost SC judge Justice Surya Kant as 53rd CJI
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New Delhi (PTI): The government on Thursday initiated the process to appoint the next chief justice of India as incumbent B R Gavai demits office on November 23, sources said.
The letter asking Justice Gavai to name his successor is set to be delivered either this evening or on Friday, people aware of the procedure to appoint Supreme Court and high court judges told PTI.
According to the memorandum of procedure, a set of documents which guide the appointment, transfer and elevation of SC and HC judges, states that appointment to the office of the Chief Justice of India should be of the seniormost judge of the Supreme Court considered fit to hold the office.
The Union law minister would, "at the appropriate time", seek the recommendation of the outgoing Chief Justice of India for the appointment of his successor.
Conventionally, the letter is sent a month before the incumbent CJI retires on attaining the age of 65 years.
Justice Surya Kant is the seniormost judge after the CJI and is next in line to become the head of the Indian judiciary.
Justice Surya Kant, born in a middle-class family on February 10, 1962, in Hissar district of Haryana, became a top court judge on May 24, 2019.
Once appointed, he will have a tenure of nearly 15 months as the CJI till his retirement on February 9, 2027.
Justice Surya Kant brings to the country’s top judicial office a wealth of experience spanning two decades on the Bench, marked by landmark verdicts on abrogation of Article 370, free speech, democracy, corruption, environment and gender equality.
Justice Surya Kant was part of the historic bench that kept the colonial-era sedition law in abeyance, directing that no new FIRs be registered under it until a government review.
He nudged the Election Commission to disclose details of 65 lakh excluded voters in Bihar, showing his commitment to electoral transparency. He also made history by directing that one-third of seats in bar associations, including the Supreme Court Bar Association, be reserved for women.
Justice Surya Kant was part of the bench that appointed a five-member committee headed by former Supreme Court judge Justice Indu Malhotra to probe the security breach during Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 2022 Punjab visit, saying such matters required “a judicially trained mind.”
He upheld the One Rank-One Pension (OROP) scheme for defence forces, calling it constitutionally valid, and continues to hear petitions of women officers in the armed forces seeking parity in permanent commission.
He was on the seven-judge bench that overruled the 1967 Aligarh Muslim University judgment, opening the way for reconsideration of the institution's minority status.
He was part of the bench that heard the Pegasus spyware case, which appointed a panel of cyber experts to probe allegations of unlawful surveillance, famously stating that the state cannot get a “free pass under the guise of national security.”
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Indigo cancels 67 flights from multiple airports due to bad weather, operational issues
Mumbai (PTI): Domestic carrier IndiGo on Thursday cancelled 67 flights from multiple airports due to "forecasted" bad weather and operational reasons, according to the airline's website.
Of the 67 cancelled flights, only four were for operational reasons, and the rest were due to "forecasted" bad weather at various airports, including Agartala, Chandigarh, Dehradun, Varanasi, Bengaluru, among others, as per the website.
Aviation regulator, DGCA, has announced the period between December 10 and February 10 next year as the official fog window this winter.
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As part of the DGCA fog operations (CAT-IIIB) norms, airlines have to mandatorily roster pilots who are trained to operate in low-visibility conditions, as well as deploy a CAT-IIIB-compliant aircraft fleet for such operations.
Category-III is an advanced navigation system that empowers an aircraft to land under foggy conditions.
Category-III-A is a precision instrument approach and landing that enables a plane to land with a runway visual range (RVR) of 200 metres, while Category-III-B helps in landing with an RVR of under 50 metres.
IndiGo, whose operations are under DGCA monitoring after the cancellations of thousands of flights early this month, is already operating a curtailed schedule in compliance with the government's order.
Under its original winter flight schedule, the airline was permitted to operate 15,014 domestic flights per week, or about 2,144 flights per day, roughly six per cent higher than the 14,158 weekly flights it operated during the summer schedule of 2025.
However, after the massive disruptions, which saw the airline cancelling 1,600 flights on a single day on account of new rest norms for pilots, which allow more rest to the pilots, the government cut down the airline's domestic flight schedule by 10 per cent or 214 flights per day.
As a result of that, IndiGo can't operate more than 1,930 flights per day on domestic routes under its current winter schedule.
The Rahul Bhatia-controlled airline cancelled thousands of flights between December 1 and December 9 on account of a lack of proper planning, and crew shortage in implementing the new set of regulations for pilots' duty period and rest, which were put in place from November 1, thereby causing severe hardships to lakhs of air travellers.
Following this, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA) formed a four-member panel, comprising Joint DG Sanjay Brahamane, Deputy Director General Amit Gupta, senior Flight Operations Inspector Kapil Manglik, and FOI Lokesh Rampal, with a mandate to identify the root causes of widespread operational disruptions at the Rahul Bhatia-controlled domestic carrier.
The panel, which has already grilled IndiGo CEO Pieter Elbers and Chief Operating Officer Isidre Porqueras as part of its probe, is expected to submit its report by this week.
Meanwhile, IndiGo, in a travel advisory on X, said, "Low visibility and fog over Bangalore has impacted flight schedule. We are keeping a close watch on the weather and doing our best where you need to be safely, smoothly".
Reacting to the advisory, an aggrieved passenger, in an X post, said, "My flight on December 20 from Bhubaneswar to Ahmedabad got delayed for more than five hours, and today my return flight from Ahmedabad to Bhubaneswar also got delayed more than three hours with the same excuse as bad weather. I am travelling with my senior citizen parents, and this delay is not acceptable. Need proper explanation, along with compensation".
