Sharad Arvind Bobde (born 24 April 1956) is an Indian judge who served as the 47th Chief Justice of India from 18 November 2019 to 23 April 2021.^[2]

He is a former Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court.^[3] He is also the former Chancellor of Maharashtra National Law University, Mumbai and Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur. He had a tenure of eight years in the Supreme Court of India and retired on 23 April 2021.^[4] On 24 April 2021, N. V. Ramana succeeded him as the CJI.^[5]

Bobde comes from a Nagpur-based Deshastha Rigvedi Brahmin Marathi family. His great-grandfather Ramachandra Pant Bobde was a noted lawyer in Chandrapur (erstwhile Chanda) between 1880 and 1900.^[6][7] The family later moved to Nagpur. His grandfather Shrinivas Ramachandra Bobde was also a lawyer.^[8] Bobde's father Arvind Shrinivas Bobde was the advocate-general of Maharashtra in 1980 and 1985. Bobde's elder brother late Vinod Arvind Bobde was a senior Supreme Court lawyer and a constitutional expert.^[9]

He enrolled as an advocate on 13 September 1978, practiced at the Nagpur Bench of the Bombay High Court with appearances before the principal seat at Bombay and before the Supreme Court of India and became a Senior Advocate in 1998. Bobde was appointed an additional judge of the Bombay High Court on 29 March 2000,^[12] and subsequently promoted to Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court on 16 October 2012 before being elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court of India on 12 April 2013.^[13][14]

He was appointed the 47th Chief Justice of India on 18 November 2019, succeeding Ranjan Gogoi.^[15] He became the only CJI to not recommend a single judge to be appointed to the Supreme Court of India, in his tenure of 1 year and 5 months.^[16]

He wrote 68 judgments as a judge of the Supreme Court. However, he sat on the bench for 547 cases. He has effectively written 8.5 judgments per year. The subject he has written the most judgments on in the Supreme Court is Criminal Law, with 29 judgments.^[17]