New Delhi, September 3
The Centre has cleared a proposal for the elevation of Justice HL Dattu as the Chief Justice of India (CJI) to succeed CJI RM Lodha, who retires on September 27.

Official sources said the government had sent the proposal to President Pranab Mukherjee for appointing Justice Dattu, who would hold the office of CJI for about 14 months till his retirement on December 2, 2015. Justice Dattu was elevated to the SC on December 17, 2008 after being a judge of the Karnataka HC and CJ of Chattisgarh and Kerala HCs. Born on December 3, 1950, he was enrolled as an advocate in Bangaluru in October 1975.

Recently, he was part of a Constitution Bench verdict on the doctrine of separate of powers between the Executive, Legislature and Judiciary. “Legislature cannot declare any decision of a court of law to be void or of no effect. It can, however, pass an amending Act to remedy the defects pointed out by a court of law or on coming to know of it. In other words, a court’s decision must always bind unless the conditions on which it is based are so fundamentally altered that the decision could not have been given in the altered circumstances,” the SC had ruled.