B. R. Gavai

Bhushan Ramkrishna Gavai, known as B. R. Gavai, was born in Amravati, Maharashtra, in 1960 and is a retired Indian jurist who served as the 52nd Chief Justice of India from 14 May to 23 November 2025. He joined the legal profession in 1985, practiced mainly before the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court in constitutional and administrative law, and served there as government pleader and public prosecutor. He became a judge of the Bombay High Court in 2003, a permanent judge in 2005, and a judge of the Supreme Court of India on 24 May 2019. He was the first Chief Justice of India from the Buddhist community and the second from the Scheduled Castes, after K. G. Balakrishnan. As a Supreme Court judge he sat on the five-judge Constitution Bench that upheld the abrogation of Article 370 and on the Constitution Bench that struck down the Electoral Bonds Scheme.