Justice Surya Kant: Striking a balance in a divided nation

Chief Justice of India Surya Kant once described India’s post-independence journey as the tentative steps of a young nation evolving into the confident strides of its “power of consequence”. The characterization reflects his own personal journey, from the winding streets of Petwar village in Haryana to the top of the Indian judiciary.

The audience at the chandelier-lined Ganatantra Mandap at Rashtrapati Bhavan, where he took the oath of office in Hindi on November 24, reflected a glimpse of his journey. He sat with village elders, teachers, family and friends, foreign judges and high-ranking dignitaries of Hisar, where he started his professional career and lost his caste name ‘Sharma’ somewhere along the way.

Unlike his predecessors, who were variously seen as insightful, privileged, or outspoken, Chief Justice Kant’s decisions and behavior on the bench reflect a conscious effort to strike a balance based on common sense. At a time when the Supreme Court is turning to more technology-focused solutions, Justice Kant chooses to remind everyone that justice is a “fundamentally human enterprise” that no machine can imitate.

When cases worth millions elbow each other to draw attention to the bench for an early hearing or a favorable decision, Judge Kant warns that he is here for the “smallest litigant in the last row.” He argues that when law develops empathy for “invisible victims” and intertwines lived realities, it ceases to be abstract and becomes inclusive. But the Supreme Court Bench, of which he was a part and which he now leads, failed to walk the talk on inclusivity and agree on a female justice for the Supreme Court.

In Judge Kant’s court, justice is not fast, but slow and sure. A nudge here, a nudge there, but relief in the end. Although balance is restored in the final verdict, his oral observations in court can seem harsh at times.

Take the case of former BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma in July 2022. Himself, Hz. He was facing multiple FIRs in various states for his derogatory comments about Muhammad. Televised statements had triggered the violence. Judge Kant stated harshly: “This woman is solely responsible for what is happening in the country.” Eighteen days later, the Bench directed that no coercive police action should be taken against Ms. Sharma.

Justice Kant did not hesitate to change his perspective during his six years on the Supreme Court bench. With “predatory haste”, it canceled the bail granted by the Allahabad High Court to Ashish Mishra, son of the then Union Minister and prime accused in the Lakhimpur Kheri murders case. The prosecution case centered on the SUV belonging to Mishra’s convoy mowing down farmers protesting controversial farm laws at a rally in Uttar Pradesh’s Lakhimpur Kheri district in 2021.

perceptual judge

In his 24-page judgment, Justice Kant, then a backbencher, slammed the Supreme Court for not giving victims a chance to participate in the bail hearing: “The victims certainly cannot be expected to sit on the fence and watch the proceedings from afar… It is the solemn duty of a court to administer justice before the memory of an injustice is clouded.” However, months later, Mishra was granted interim bail by Justice Kant’s Bench; It also provided relief to four vulnerable farmers in a counter FIR linked to the main Lakhimpur Kheri case.

Recordings of court hearings from his early years on the Supreme Court profile a perceptive judge who asked unfiltered questions into the corridors of power. During the Pegasus case hearings in 2021, it was revealed that Judge Kant, a moronic judge on the Chief Justices’ Board, insisted that the government take a clear stance on whether Israeli-origin, military-grade spyware was violating citizens’ privacy.

But when the case came up for hearing again earlier this year, Judge Kant, who now presides over the bench and is preparing to take over as chief judge, changed course. This time their questions were directed at the petitioners rather than the government. One of them was: “What if the country uses this spyware for security reasons against anti-national elements?” The hearing was held a few days after the Pahalgam terror attack in April 2025.

In 2021, Justice Kant was one of the judges on the Bench that decided to suspend the sedition provision (Section 124A) of the erstwhile Indian Penal Code. Four years later, in 2025, Justice Kant, who now presides over the bench, returned to question whether potential abuse by the state of Article 152, which criminalized acts that endangered national sovereignty and replaced the previous sedition law, could constitute grounds for declaring that provision unconstitutional. However, at the hearing, Judge Kant was seen to have protected the petitioner journalists from imminent arrest for the publication of a critical article, noting that “mere opposition cannot endanger sovereignty”.

In recent years, we have witnessed freedom of expression knocking on the doors of the Supreme Court for the right to breathe without fear. Judge Kant sees freedom of expression as a child to be watched. It called for effective rules to regulate user-generated content published online.

Justice Kant granted interim bail to academic Ali Khan Mahmudabad, who was being tracked by the Haryana Police for his social media posts about the war and the suffering caused by Operation Sindoor. But the judge also suspected the academic of “dog whistling” and formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) of senior police officers to investigate his online posts for “double meaning”. But again, somehow, the order in the Mahmudabad case has emerged as an effort to strike a balance with an earlier direction, passed just a few days ago, to constitute a similar SIT to look into comments made by Madhya Pradesh Minister Vijay Shah about Colonel Sofiya Kureshi. Justice Kant had termed the BJP leader’s remarks as “rude and inconsiderate”.

Underpinning the drive to strike a balance is a philosophy of pragmatism that has seen the judge negotiate peace between farmers blocking the Shambhu border and the Union government, as well as convincing Kerala to accept the Centre’s offer of ₹13,608 crore to overcome an immediate financial emergency.

A practical perspective lay behind his advice to states to introduce effective guidelines against private hospitals, without adopting a rigid approach that would discourage private investment in the healthcare sector. In his judgment on the petition challenging the removal of expelled Bihar Legislative Council Member and RJD leader Sunil Kumar Singh following his statements against Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, Justice Kant said that the action taken by the Assembly against an MP or MLA should be proportionate to the degree of obstruction caused.

need for transparency

Justice Kant had also recognized the urgent need for transparency in the Special Intensive Revision exercise in Bihar and had postponed the decision on the question of constitutionality of the process. The Presidential Reference Board, which he shares, tries hard to strike a balance in the view that Governors cannot be bound by timelines, but States can resort to judicial review in case of obvious delays in approving pending Bills.

Judge Kant’s apparent efforts to achieve balance in the administration of justice are at odds with clear political and ideological divisions in society. Justice BR Gavai, in his speech on the day of his retirement as Chief Justice of India, said that the concern faced by judges in today’s India is that “if you do not rule against the government, you are not a good judge”.

The search for balance in a divided world is a difficult and unrewarding task.

Judge Kant describes his first case as a Supreme Court judge, a cross-border custody dispute involving two young children. Their parents, separated by national borders and strained by years of litigation, stood on opposite sides of the courtroom. Judge Kant was most impressed by the silent suffering of children in this tense atmosphere; his worried eyes darted from one lawyer to another.

At that moment, he said, “the greatness of the law felt deeply personal and the greatness of my responsibility settled in. I realized then that justice is not just about resolving disputes, but about protecting the innocent from being lost in the storms of circumstances.”

Chief Justice Kant has until February 9, 2027; this is ample opportunity to prove that it is there for the innocents who are “lost in the storms of circumstances”, like the millions of voters caught in the cyclone ‘SIR’.