Who was the Chief Justice of India as of February 2017?

Concept

The Chief Justice of India (CJI) is the head of the Indian judiciary and is appointed by convention as the senior-most sitting judge of the Supreme Court. Each CJI serves until retirement at age 65, so to identify the CJI on a given date you must find the judge whose tenure (date of taking office to date of retirement) includes that date.

Application

Place February 2017 on the timeline of recent Chief Justices:

• H. L. Dattu (42nd CJI): in office Sept 2014 to 2 Dec 2015 - tenure ended well before 2017.

• T. S. Thakur (43rd CJI): in office 3 Dec 2015 to 3 Jan 2017 - he retired on 3 January 2017, so he was not CJI in February.

• Jagdish Singh Khehar (44th CJI): took office 4 Jan 2017 and retired 27 Aug 2017 - February 2017 falls squarely within this tenure.

• C. S. Karnan: a serving High Court judge at the time, never appointed CJI.

Only the tenure of Jagdish Singh Khehar contains February 2017, so he was the Chief Justice of India on that date.

Cross-check

Khehar was the 44th CJI and the first from the Sikh community; his term ran 4 January to 27 August 2017, confirming he held office throughout February 2017.