This CJI was Sarosh Homi KapadiaHe was born 6 weeks after independenceStarted studying law while working in class IV job
There has been a Chief Justice of India who rose to this top post from a very poor background. He started his career as a peon. Then he became a clerk. He also studied law. His father grew up in an orphanage. He became the 16th Chief Justice of the Supreme Court on the strength of his hard work and intelligence. Many of his decisions are taken as examples. His name was Sarosh Homi Kapadia.
He was born in Mumbai in September 1947, six weeks after the country’s independence. When he became the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he was also the first CJI born in independent India. He graduated from Government Law College, Mumbai. Started his career as a Class IV employee. Then became a law clerk in a lawyer’s office in Mumbai. Later worked with Firoz Damania who was a highly respected “firebrand” labor lawyer.
Unlike the elite Parsis of Bombay, his father was raised in an orphanage in Surat and worked as a modest defence clerk. His mother Katie was a housewife. The family barely made ends meet. Young Sarosh was determined to make his own fortune. He wanted to become a judge and nothing else. From the very beginning, he was interested in the legal aspects.
With the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh while he was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Kapadia’s rise from a clerk to a lawyer and then to become an additional judge in the Bombay High Court is also a story that tells us that if you have talent and a strong will along with the ability to work hard, you can reach anywhere.
After becoming the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, he said in a speech on the occasion of Independence Day celebrations, “I come from a poor family. I started my career as a Class IV employee. The only asset I have is my honesty.”
climbed up the stairs one by one
Kapadia was appointed as a permanent judge in the Bombay High Court on 23 March 1993. He became the Chief Justice of Uttarakhand High Court on 5 August 2003. He became a judge in the Supreme Court on 18 December 2003. On 12 May 2010, he was sworn in as the Chief Justice of India by President Pratibha Patil. He retired on 29 September 2012.
Kapadia was a staunch Parsi. He was interested in Buddhist and Hindu philosophy. He regularly visited Belur Math in Kolkata. He learnt meditation. He read everything about Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda. He died on 4 January 2016 in Mumbai.
Kapadia fought many cases of laborers and poor people in the early days of his career as a lawyer.
He used to deliver case briefs to the judges
Kapadia started his career in Mumbai as a grade four employee with Behramji Jeejeebhoy, he was a peon, his main job was to deliver briefs of cases to lawyers. Behramji Jeejeebhoy was the owner of seven villages in Bombay. He had a lot of land revenue. Due to this, many of his cases related to land were going on in the courts. Those cases were handled by Gagret & Company, where a young lawyer Ratnakar D Sulakhe worked. Sulakhe also later rose to higher positions. He wrote in one of his memoirs, “Sarosh used to come to our office often. This is how I met him for the first time. He had a keen interest in law. I encouraged him to take it up.”
Studying law while working in a Class IV job
While working as a fourth class employee, Kapadia started studying law. In the meantime, he became a clerk. When he became a law graduate, he joined the bar. By that time, he had a deep understanding of land and revenue related issues. He started fighting such cases.
As a junior lawyer, he used to prepare a lot. He had an amazing ability to debate, which made him famous. He joined a senior lawyer named Firoz Damania, who was then considered a supporter of the poor and the marginalized.
Rarely take vacations
He once turned down an invitation to represent India at a Commonwealth Law Association conference in Hyderabad because it was his working day at the Supreme Court. On the first day of taking charge as CJI, he disposed of 39 cases in half an hour. Kapadia rarely took holidays.
Then for three years he ate only chickpeas for lunch
When Kapadia became a judge in the Bombay High Court, he always sat in Courtroom Number Three on the ground floor, much to the surprise of many, as judges moved up in the courthouse building as their seniority increased.
Kapadia later revealed the secret. In the early days of his career, as a low-ranking employee, he had to attend to lawyers in the court every day. He would then eat his lunch sitting in the fountain area near the court. It was the most relaxing place. For three years, he would often eat a small cone of roasted chickpeas for lunch. The place where he ate lunch was visible from his court number three.
The famous decision
On 3 March 2011, a three-member bench headed by Kapadia cancelled the appointment of Chief Vigilance Commissioner Polayil Joseph Thomas made by the high-powered committee comprising then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Home Minister P. Chidambaram and opposition leader Sushma Swaraj (dissenting). This decision caused great embarrassment to the government. Manmohan Singh had to admit his mistake in the appointment. Apart from this, he gave many important decisions.
Tags: Chief Justice, Chief Justice of India, Supreme Court, supreme court of india
FIRST PUBLISHED : June 17, 2024, 09:38 IST