Justice UU Lalit,
64, is in line to become the next Chief Justice of India (CJI). Current CJI NV
Ramana recommended Justice UU Lalit’s name to the Union Law Ministry. If
appointed, Justice Lalit will head India’s apex court for a period of 74 days,
until his retirement, after which a new CJI will once again have to be appointed.

Justice Lalit is
only the second judge to have been elevated directly from the Bar to the
Supreme Court bench. He was appointed to the Supreme Court on August 13, 2014.
In his eight years in the apex court, Justice Lalit has been part of several
landmark judgements. Here is a list:

Triple Talaq
judgement

Triple Talaq or
instant divorce, a method of divorce in Islamic law, was outlawed in India in
2017. Justice UU Lalit was one of the five judges who presided over the matter.
The Supreme Court bench, by a 3-2 majority, decided that triple talaq or
instant divorce was violative of the Indian Constitution.

The three judges
who voted in favour of outlawing triple talaq were: Justices Kurian Joseph, RF
Nariman and UU Lalit. Then Chief Justice JS Khehar and Justice S Abdul Nazeer
called for the judgement to be put on hold for six months until a new law was
brought in to the effect.

POCSO: Skin-to-skin
contact case

Justice UU Lalit
spearheaded the Supreme Court judgement that ruled that skin-to-skin contact
with a child, including touching sexual parts of a child’s body or physical
contact with a child with ‘sexual intent’ would qualify as sexual assault in
accordance with the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
Justice UU Lalit’s stance that the most important ingredient in sexual assault
cases was intent and not skin-to-skin contact altered the premise of the POCSO
Act in many significant ways.

Vijay Mallya
Contempt of Court

Vijay Mallya, once
the king in Kingfisher, has been a fugitive from Indian law for years. It was a
three-judge bench led by Justice UU Lalit that sentenced Mallya to four months
imprisonment for contempt of court.

Sree
Padmanabhaswamy Temple case

A bench led by
Justice UU Lalit ruled the erstwhile royal family of Travancore has the right
over management of the historic Sree Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Kerala. The Sree
Padmanabhaswamy temple is one of the richest shrines in the state. The Supreme
Court held “hereditability must be attached to a right of Shebait (servitor) of
the temple. The Supreme Court allowed the appeal of legal heirs of Uthradam
Thirunal Marthanda Varma, younger brother of the last rulers, Sree Chithira
Thirunal Balarama Varma.