Justice Bidyut Ranjan Sarangi took oath as the 15th chief justice of the Jharkhand High Court on Friday.
Governor C P Radhakrishnan administered the oath of office to Sarangi at the Raj Bhavan here.
Chief Minister Hemant Soren and Speaker Rabindra Nath Mahato attended the swearing-in ceremony, besides several judges and senior government officials.
Cabinet Secretary Vandana Dadel read out the warrant of appointment issued by President Droupadi Murmu.
The post of the chief justice of the Jharkhand High Court was lying vacant after the superannuation of Justice Sanjaya Kumar Mishra on December 28, 2023.
The Union Ministry of Law and Justice on July 3 issued a notification regarding the appointment of Justice Sarangi as the chief justice of the high court.
Jharkhand Governor C P Radhakrishnan said, "Now we have a new chief justice. We will work together for justice to get established and delivered to the poorest among the poor at the earliest possible time."
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Chief Minister Hemant Soren told reporters, "We finally got a new chief justice. The post of chief justice is very important. The Supreme Court had announced his appointment as the chief justice for Jharkhand High Court around seven-eight months ago but I don't know why the central government took so long to send him here. I think it could have happened earlier."
Born on July 20, 1962 in Nayagarh district of Odisha, Sarangi was earlier a judge at the Orissa High Court.
Married to Nirupama Sarangi, he is father of two daughters.
Sarangi acquired degrees of LLB and LLM from MS Law College, Cuttack, under Utkal University and he was awarded PhD in law from Sambalpur University.
He joined the Bar in December, 1985, and conducted regular practice at Orissa High Court and Supreme Court.
He conducted cases especially in civil, criminal, constitutional, revenue, tax, labour, service, mining, education, electricity, insurance, banking, telephone, elections and others.
For his outstanding performance and high standard of professional ethics as a lawyer, he was conferred the Haricharan Mukherjee Memorial Award with Gold Medal in 2002 by the then Justice PK Balsubramanyam, Chief Justice of Orissa High Court.
Sarangi was elevated to the Bench and sworn in as a Permanent Judge of Orissa High Court on June 20, 2013.
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