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Madras High Court Chief Justice’s post to regain its lost credence after a six-year hiatus
Published – July 13, 2024 07:47 pm IST – CHENNAI
It was once considered a springboard to the Supreme Court with all Chief Justices from 2008 to 2018 having been elevated to the Supreme Court
Mohamed Imranullah S MOHAMED IMRANULLAH S.
Acting Chief Justice R. Mahadevan
The Madras High Court Chief Justice’s post was once considered a springboard for elevation to the Supreme Court. All those who occupied the position between 2008 and 2018 had reached the apex court. After a six-year hiatus, the proposed elevation of incumbent Acting Chief Justice (ACJ) R. Mahadevan is expected to restore the coveted credence attached to the post.
Beginning from the elevation of A.K. Ganguly in December 2008, his successors H.L. Gokhale, M.Y. Eqbal (since dead), R.K. Agrawal, Sanjay Kishan Kaul and Indira Banerjee made it to the Supreme Court in 2010, 2012, 2014, 2017 and 2018 respectively. The spate of elevations came to a grinding halt in September 2019 when the then Chief Justice V.K. Tahilramani resigned the post.
She left the higher judiciary in protest against her proposed transfer to the Meghalaya High Court. Thereafter, none of her successors in the Madras High Court made it to the Supreme Court. However, the recent recommendation to elevate the ACJ has come at a time when a judge whose parent High Court also happens to be the Madras High Court is holding the post.
Born in Chennai on June 10, 1963, Justice Mahadevan was appointed as an additional judge of the Madras High Court on October 25, 2013 after 24 years of standing in the Bar since his enrolment with the Bar Council in 1989. He was made a permanent judge on April 14, 2015 and got appointed as the ACJ on May 24, 2024. He had delivered several notable judgements in almost all branches of law.
In Periyanambi Narasimha Gopalan versus Director, Archaelogical Survey of India (2021), he had issued a slew of directions and guidelines for preservation and conservation of ancient monuments as well as temples and the heritage sites recognised by UNESCO. In 2016, he had uphled the validity of the declaration of Telugu as a classical language in R. Gandhi versus the State.
He headed a special Division Bench, along with Justice P.D. Audikesavalu, to hear idol theft cases and passed orders for recovering them from foreign countries. He had also dealt with a host of cases related to retrieval of temple properties from encroachers and maintaining them properly. He had also ruled against involvement of politicians in sports bodies and insisted that they should be manned only by sportspersons.
During his tenure in the Madurai Bench of the Madras High Court, he had ordered inclusion of Tirukkural in the school syllabus for classes VI to XII for the uplift of the moral standards of the society. He had rendered several important verdicts in taxation and company law too and had been a part of multiple five judge Benches, three judge Benches and Division Benches of the High Court and resolved legal conundrums.
Justice Mahadevan had disposed of more than 96,000 cases (both main as well as miscellaneous petitions) during his 11 year stint as a judge of the High Court. Of the total disposal, 6,512 cases were disposed of in 55 days when he presided over the Madurai Bench of the High Court.
