Tamil Nadu Governor R.N. Ravi administered oath of office to Madras High Court Chief Justice Munishwar Nath Bhandari in the presence of Chief Minister M.K. Stalin at the Raj Bhavan here on Monday. Hailing from Rajasthan, he is the 32nd Indian Chief Justice of the High Court and 43rd Chief Justice if the 11 British Chief Justices since August 15, 1862 are also taken into consideration.
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After the swearing in ceremony, Advocate General R. Shunmugasundaram welcomed the Chief Justice at an official function organised by the Registry on the High Court campus and said the latter had achieved a very high distinction in his legal career by becoming the Chief Justice of the second oldest High Court, the first being the Calcutta High Court, in the country.
The A-G said, the Madras High Court campus spread over 107 acres was also the second largest court complexes in the world after the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom and that eminent jurist Fali S. Nariman himself had acknowledged that Court Hall No.1 of the Madras High Court, presided over by its Chief Justice, was the best court hall in the entire country.
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Introducing the Chief Justice to the gathering, the A-G said that he was born on September 13, 1960 in Rajasthan and got enrolled as an advocate in May 1980. After 24 years of practice in the Bar, he got elevated as judge of Rajasthan High Court in July 2007. In March 2019, he got transferred to the Allahabad High Court and then assumed office as Acting Chief Justice of Madras High Court on November 22, 2021.
The A-G said the patient hearing given by him to the lawyers in his capacity as Acting Chief Justice, the fair treatment and expeditious disposal of cases had already come in for high commendation from the Bar here. He recalled that Chief Justice Bhandari was elevated as a judge of the Rajasthan High Court in 2007 by an order issued by the then President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam [a Tamil] and therefore his relationship with Tamil Nadu had begun much longer.
In his reply, the Chief Justice said, he felt fortunate to be among the few who got a second welcome at the Madras High Court – first as its Acting Chief Justice and now as Chief Justice. “What greater privilege can I seek than being the Chief Justice of Madras High Court, one of the greatest and leading institutions,” he said and promised to do his best to deliver justice to the common man.
Stating he was aware of the various problems faced by the Bar, he said, he would do his best to solve them and always remain accessible. Now that normalcy was getting restored after the COVID-19 lockdown, he impressed upon the need for the judges in the High Court as well as the trial courts to show more vigour in disposing of as many cases as possible.
Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry chairman P.S. Amalraj and other Bar leaders too welcomed the Chief Justice.