When DY Chandrachud, Next Chief Justice, Overturned 2 Of His Father's Judgments

Justice DY Chandrachud is set to be the first Chief Justice of India whose father - YV Chandrachud - was also one. He will take over from Justice UU Lalit, who retires on November 8.

Justice DY Chandrachud, in a distinguished career, overturned his father's judgments twice.

In 2017, while confirming that the Right to Privacy is a fundamental right, Justice DY Chandrachud, as part of a nine-judge bench, set aside a controversial order that supported the Emergency of 1975.

His father Justice YV Chandrachud upheld the presidential order to impose the Emergency, a period during which the Indira Gandhi-led Congress government severely restricted democratic rights, jailed several opposition leaders, and clamped down on the media.

Justice Chandrachud senior was among the four judges in a five-judge bench who ruled in 1976 that fundamental rights can be suspended during Emergency and people can't approach the courts for the protection of their rights. The lone dissenting judge was Justice HR Khanna, who had observed: "What is at stake is the rule of law...the question is whether the law speaking through the authority of the Court shall be absolutely silenced and rendered mute..."

Justice DY Chandrachud, 41 years later, called the order "seriously flawed" and praised Justice Khanna. "The view taken by Justice Khanna must be accepted, and accepted in reverence for the strength of its thoughts and the courage of its convictions," he said.

The second case in which Justice DY Chandrachud differed with his father was on the adultery law.

In 2018, Justice DY Chandrachud was part of the bench that unanimously struck down the law that considers adultery as an offence committed by one man against another. With that order, adultery is no longer a crime, only grounds for divorce.

In 1985, Justice YV Chandrachud had held the adultery law as constitutionally valid. The law - Section 497 - said: "Whoever has sexual intercourse with a person who is and whom he knows or has reason to believe to be the wife of another man, without the consent or connivance of that man, such sexual intercourse not amounting to the offence of rape, is guilty of the offence of adultery."

Justice YV Chandrachud wrote: "It is commonly accepted that it is the man who is the seducer and not the woman. This position may have undergone some change over the years but it is for the legislature to consider whether Section 497 should be amended appropriately so as to take note of the transformation which society has undergone."

Decades later, his son observed that judgments must be "relevant" to the times.

According to him, Section 497 "perpetrates the subordinate nature of woman in a marriage".

"Very often, adultery happens when the marriage has already broken down and the couple is living separately. If either of them indulges in sex with another person, should it be punished under Section 497?" - Justice DY Chandrachud said.