Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari Appointed Acting Chief Justice of Uttarakhand High Court

Justice Manoj Kumar Tiwari, a judge of the Uttarakhand High Court, has been appointed to perform the duties of the office of Chief Justice of that High Court with effect from October 9, 2026. The order follows the retirement of Justice Manoj Kumar Gupta, Chief Justice of the High Court, on October 8, 2026.

The appointment is made under Article 223 of the Constitution, which lets the President name a judge to act as Chief Justice when the office is vacant or the Chief Justice cannot perform the duties. An acting Chief Justice runs the court's administration and allocates its work until a regular Chief Justice takes charge.

For Tiwari this is the third stint in the role. He first acted as Chief Justice from October 27, 2023 to February 3, 2024, and again from October 11, 2024 to December 25, 2024. The second stint began when Chief Justice Ritu Bahri retired on October 10, 2024, and ended with the arrival of Justice Guhanathan Narendar.

Tiwari was born in September 1965 at Pithoragarh, in a family of lawyers. His father is a designated Senior Advocate. He studied at Kendriya Vidyalaya, Pithoragarh, and Government Post Graduate College, Pithoragarh, and passed his LLB from Delhi University in 1990. He enrolled with the Bar Council of Uttar Pradesh that year and began practice at the Allahabad High Court.

When the Uttarakhand High Court was created in 2000, he shifted to Nainital. He was President of the High Court Bar Association, Nainital, in 2008 and was designated a Senior Advocate on May 20, 2009. He acted as special counsel for the state government in several cases before being elevated as a permanent judge of the High Court in May 2017.

His term in the acting post has a ceiling set by his own age. He turns 62 in September 2027, the retirement age for High Court judges, so the court has less than a year before he leaves the bench in any case.

The order takes effect on October 9, a day after Justice Gupta retires on October 8.