A ‘muqaddar ka sikandar’ journey: The future CJI’s mother on her son’s rise from Amravati slum to top SC post

The judge with a ‘connect with people’

Born on November 24, 1960, Justice Gavai is the oldest of three siblings. His father, Ramkrishna Suryabhan Gavai (1929-2015), “Dadasaheb” to his followers and admirers, was the founder of the Ambedkarite outfit, the Republican Party of India (Gavai). A Lok Sabha MP from Amravati, the senior Gavai served as Governor of Bihar, Sikkim, and Kerala between 2006 and 2011, when the Congress-led UPA was in power at the Centre.

Justice Gavai was initiated into the activities of serving the samaj in his infancy, as he would lie near his mother as she made bhakris (Maharashtrian flatbread) for the hordes of visitors to their house.

With social work keeping the senior Gavai away from home for prolonged periods, he worried his children would get “spoiled like children of politicians”. Kamaltai took over and ensured that the young Gavai helped her with chores in the house — from cooking, washing utensils, serving food, and later, farming and drawing water from borewells late at night. “Maybe because he was the eldest, he was a mature child quite early,” she says. “During the 1971 Bangladesh war, even though our economic condition was bad, the soldiers would have meals at our small house in the Frezarpura area and Bhushan would help me in various chores.”

A portrait of Dr Ambedkar at the Nagpur bench of the Bombay High Court that Justice Gavai inaugurated. Justice Gavai has often invoked the spirit of the Constitution to acknowledge how affirmative action has shaped his identity. (Express photo/ Amit Chakravarty)

It was at the Frezarpura slum in Amravati that Justice Gavai spent much of his childhood, studying in a municipal Marathi-medium school till Class 7, after which he variously spent time in Mumbai, Nagpur and Amravati.

Roopchand Khandelwal, a businessman in Amravati who was Justice Gavai’s neighbour in Frezarpura and his classmate in the municipal school, says, “He had a small jhopdi then, which was reconstructed later and sold off by the family. The slum had labourers from various castes and religions. Our school had no benches and we would sit on the floor. Bhushan was helpful, polite … kind to the underprivileged.”

Dr Raj Gajbhiye, an old friend and Dean of Government Medical College and Hospital, Nagpur, spoke of how Justice Gavai’s judicial decisions were instrumental in constructing government hospitals in Chandrapur and Yavatmal, aiding tribal people.

After a B.Com degree, Justice Gavai studied law from Amravati University and began his practice in 1985 at the age of 25. After early stints in Mumbai and Amravati, he moved to Nagpur, where the Bombay High Court has its bench. There, he represented the government as Additional Public Prosecutor (for criminal cases) and later, GP or Government Pleader (appearing in civil suits).

Always an independent-minded lawyer, Justice Gavai had agreed to be GP on the condition that he would pick his own team. At least two of his picks for Assistant Government Pleaders — Justices Bharati Dangre and Anil S Kilor — went on to become judges of the Bombay High Court.

Justice Gavai’s mother Kamaltai at her home in the Congress Nagar area of Amravati, its walls lined with photos of B R Ambedkar. (Express photo/ Amit Chakravarty)

Speaking about how he stood up for his team, Justice Kilor said that when a Chief Secretary had called Justice Gavai to sack one of the AGPs, he read the riot act to the bureaucrat. “You are my client, and I expect you to behave like that. Clients give instructions to lawyers and not directions. If you want to remove the AGP, remove me first,” Justice Kilor recalled Justice Gavai as saying.

Incumbent GP and Senior Advocate Devendra Chauhan, too, said Justice Gavai set a work culture where every AGP got equal work.

Justice Gavai did not compartmentalise his legal practice to any forum or area of law. Besides appearing before the SC and HC, he would fight cases in the district court and for revenue authorities, including the tehsildar. It is perhaps this varied experience, along with his family background of working with the backward classes, that shaped his judicial worldview.

In 2001, he was offered a judgeship, but the process took over two years. A disheartened Justice Gavai considered withdrawing his consent for judgeship, but his father is learnt to have advised him against it. In 2003, he was finally elevated as an additional judge of the Bombay HC and in 2005, became a permanent judge.

In 2015, he sought a transfer from the principal seat in Mumbai to Nagpur to take care of his ailing father, who died in July 2015.

His contemporaries in the Amravati and Nagpur Bar talk of Justice Gavai’s “connect with people”.

Justice Nitin W Sambre, now the most senior judge at the Nagpur bench of the HC, says, “He understands what the difficulties of the common man are. Money was never his priority. Even when he was a lawyer, 50 to 60% of the work would be on pro bono basis,” he says.

Justice Sambre recalls the time Justice Gavai was short of money for a house he wanted to buy. “He then sold his four-wheeler and for a year, he would come to court on a two-wheeler. He is a self-made man,” he says.

Many also speak about Justice Gavai’s encouragement of junior lawyers.

“He has a knack for making juniors comfortable. As a High Court judge, he wouldn’t allow senior advocates to appear during vacation benches (and ensured the juniors got a chance to argue),” says senior advocate Firdos Mirza.

Advocate Atul Pande, President of High Court Bar Association (HCBA), Nagpur, says, “Being a first-generation lawyer, unlike most of his predecessors,” Justice Gavai has “set an example that one can reach the highest position with hard work and consistency.

On May 25,2019, after serving as High Court judge for 16 years, Justice Gavai was elevated to the SC. While his appointment to the HC may have been delayed, Justice Gavai has himself acknowledged that his SC appointment was fast-tracked by a couple of years for reasons including the need to ensure diversity on the Bench.

“If not for giving representation to Scheduled Castes, I would have been elevated maybe two years later,” he had said during a discussion hosted by the New York City Bar Association in 2024.

Gavai family’s house at Congress Nagar in Amravati. Former President of India Pratibha Patil’s residence is down the same road. (Express photo/ Amit Chakravarty)

The SC collegium in its recommendation elevating Justice Gavai to the Supreme Court had said, “His recommendation, in no way, is to be misconstrued to mean that three senior-most Judges from Bombay High Court (two of whom are serving as Chief Justices) are less suitable than Justice Gavai. On his appointment, the Supreme Court Bench will have a Judge belonging to the Scheduled Caste category after about a decade.”

Apart from the role of affirmative action in his career, Justice Gavai has openly acknowledged his family’s political background in court.

In July 2023, while hearing a criminal defamation case against Rahul Gandhi, Justice Gavai had offered to recuse, disclosing his family’s affiliation with the Congress. “There is some difficulty on my part… Though (my father) was not a Congress member, he was associated with Congress and very closely… for more than 40 years. He had been a Member of Parliament, Member of Legislature, with support of the Congress and… And my brother is still in politics and is associated with Congress,” he had said.

The government, however, did not seek his recusal. The bench eventually stayed the conviction, paving the way for Gandhi’s return to Lok Sabha.

What’s on the table for Justice Gavai

Despite his short, six-month stint as CJI, Justice Gavai has his task cut out. He takes over amid a credibility crisis for the judiciary, with two sitting High Court judges staring at impeachment proceedings — Allahabad High Court judge Shekhar Yadav, whose remarks at a VHP gathering were seen as divisive and partisan, and former Delhi High Court judge Yashwant Verma at whose residence unaccounted cash was found after a fire broke out on March 14.

One of the first few cases he will hear as CJI will be on May 15, when the Supreme Court takes up the crucial hearing challenging the contentious amendments to the Waqf Act.