Justice Atul S Chandurkar of Bombay High Court among 3 elevated as Supreme Court judges

The Collegium made the recommendation two days after Justice Abhay S Oka of the Supreme Court, who belonged to the Bombay HC, retired on May 24. Justice Chandurkar will supersede the Chief Justices of Kerala and Madras High Courts, Nitin Jamdar and K R Shriram, respectively, both belonging to the Bombay High Court.

While Justice Jamdar was appointed as Bombay HC judge on January 23, 2012, Justice Shriram became HC judge on June 21, 2013, the same day as Justice Chandurkar. However, Justice Shriram was administered oath before Justice Chandurkar on the said day and featured ahead of him on the seniority list.

Born on April 7, 1965, Justice Chandurkar completed his schooling at St Vincent’s High School in Pune. After graduating from Ness Wadia College, Pune, he obtained a law degree from ILS Law College, Pune. Thereafter, he started practising as an advocate on July 21, 1988 and worked in the chambers of senior advocate B N Naik, who later became the judge of the HC.

Justice Chandurkar shifted to Nagpur in 1992 and practised before various courts and also authored two books on the Maharashtra Municipal Council Nagar Panchayats and Industrial Townships Act, 1965, and the Maharashtra Rent Control Act, 1999.

He was elevated as an additional judge of the Bombay HC in June 2013. He also served as an administrative judge (seniormost) at the Nagpur bench of the Bombay HC.

In June 2024, a Justice Chandurkar-led division bench of the Bombay HC dismissed a plea by nine students of a college in Chembur challenging the dress code that banned hijabs, among other religious identifiers. The judge held that instructions issued by the college did not suffer from infirmity to violate fundamental rights to freedom of expression and of practising religion.

In September 2024, Justice Chandurkar gave a deciding opinion after the split verdict on pleas challenging amended IT rules that empower the government to identify “fake news” on social media platforms through a Fact Check Unit (FCU).

Justice Chandurkar agreed with the opinion of Justice Gautam S Patel, who was part of the division bench that delivered the split verdict and struck down the amended rules as ‘unconstitutional’ and violative of Articles 14 and 19 (1) (a) and 19 (1) (g) of the Constitution.

In October 2024, a bench presided over by Justice Chandurkar stayed the Maharashtra government’s decision to take back over 116 acres of prime land parcel in the Charkop area in Kandivali (West) allotted for industrial purposes.

In March this year, a Justice Chandurkar-led bench dismissed a plea by a Dalit PhD student challenging his suspension by the Tata Institute of Social Science (TISS) over “repetitive misconduct and anti-national activities”.

Earlier this month, Justice Chandurkar sought to know from the Maharashtra government when heritage status would be granted to the residence of Hindutva ideologue VD Savarkar, Savarkar Sadan, situated in the Shivaji Park area of Central Mumbai, and ordered that the status of the property should not be changed until June 13.