Justice A.S. Bopanna retires after a five-year long tenure

On 19 May 2024, Justice A.S. Bopanna retired from the Supreme Court. He was elevated from the Gauhati High Court in May 2019. During his tenure, Justice Bopanna authored 91 judgements and presided over 518 benches. 

In this article, we will look at Justice Bopanna’s tenure in comparison to other sitting judges of the Supreme Court. 

Figure 1 plots the expected tenure of all sitting judges of the top court. Justice Bopanna’s tenure falls short of the average tenure of sitting judges, which is currently at 5.3 years. Justice Bopanna had a tenure of five years. 

Justice Bopanna was appointed on 24 May 2019 alongside Justices B.R. Gavai, Surya Kant, and Aniruddha Bose. Justice Bose retired last month. Among this cohort of judges, Bose had the shortest tenure (4.8 years), followed by Justice Bopanna. 

Among the sitting judges, Chief Justice D.Y. Chandrachud has the highest tenure of 8.5 years. The shortest tenure will be of Justice S.C. Sharma who was appointed last year in November 2023. 

During his five year tenure, he was a part of several Constitution Benches including those which determined the Constitutional validity of the Union’s demonetisation scheme, the validity of circumstantial evidence in bribery cases, and most recently the Bench which decided the immunity of legislators for accepting bribes for any speech of vote in the Parliament. 

For a detailed analysis, check out his tenure in numbers and notable judgements.