Justice Sanjiv Khanna's landmark judgments: EVMs, electoral bonds and Kejriwal bail

Justice Sanjiv Khanna will serve a six-month tenure as Chief Justice of India and is expected to retire on May 13, 2025.

Justice Sanjiv Khanna has taken oath as the 51st Chief Justice of India at the Rashtrapati Bhavan today for a six-month tenure before retiring in May, 2025.

Justice Sanjiv Khanna takes oath as the 51st Chief Justice of India at the Rashtrapati Bhavan(PTI)

Justice Khanna will be replacing outgoing CJI D Y Chandrachud and has a storied career spanning cases concerning constitutional law, taxation, arbitration, commercial law, and environmental law.

He has also been instrumental in delivering judgements on Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs), electoral bonds and the abrogation of Article 370, among others.

Here are some of his landmark judgements:

Arvind Kejriwal's bail

Justice Sanjiv Khanna in July 2024 had granted interim bail to former chief minister Arvind Kejriwal while he was embroiled in a case under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act, citing that there was no clarity of whether there was a need to arrest Kejriwal.

While he did not rule on the legality of the PMLA charge itself, he did bring up the important question of whether there were any additional grounds for arrest and if they were justified.

EVM-VVPAT cross verification

Justice Khanna rejected all petitions in April 2024 questioning the use of Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in the Lok Sabha elections. He clarified that a cross-verification of all votes or a return to paper ballots were not viable options.

He also directed the Election Commission of India to instead introduce slips with the symbol or bar code of a party to be issued after each vote to simplify the counting process. His judgement came amidst massive outrage around EVMs and debate around their use/misuse.

Electoral bonds

In February of 2024, Justice Khanna as part of a five-judge bench declared the controversial electoral bonds scheme unconstitutional due to concerns around transparency of donors and potential for corrupt practices.

Justice Khanna dismissed the argument that donor privacy applied to donations made through banking channels, noting that bank officers responsible for handling the bonds are aware of the donors' identities.

Abrogation of Article 370

Justice Khanna also played a key role in the landmark 2023 decision by a five-judge bench that upheld the abrogation of Article 370, which had granted special status to Jammu and Kashmir.

He was of the strong opinion that stripping away the special status of Jammu and Kashmir would not endanger the principles of India's federal structure.

RTIs and judicial independence

In an influential decision that reaffirmed the coexistence of judicial independence and transparency, in 2019, he contributed to a ruling that stated that the office of the Chief Justice of India could be subject to informations under the Right to Information (RTI) Act.

He also stated that the decision of whether the CJI's office should fulfill the RTI requests must be determined on a case-by-case basis. In the judgement, Justice Khanna assigned responsibility to the court’s Chief Public Information Officer (CPIO) for assessing whether disclosures about the CJI serve the larger public interest or violate privacy.