A. R. Lakshmanan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaA. R. Lakshmanan
In office
20 December 2002 – 22 March 2007
In office
2006–2009
Personal details
Born 22 March 1942
Died 26 August 2020 (aged 78)
Cause of death Cardiac arrest
Resting place Devakottai, Sivagangai District, Tamilnadu.
Arunachalam R. Lakshmanan (22 March 1942 – 27 August 2020) was a judge of the Supreme Court of India.
He studied in Chennai. Before his elevation to the Supreme Court in 2002, he served as a judge on the Madras High Court and Kerala High Court. He was also appointed as Chief Justice of Rajasthan High Court in 2000 and Andhra Pradesh High Court in 2001. He retired in 2007.
He hailed from the Nagarathar community and his native is Devakottai, Tamil Nadu. He served as chairman of the Law Commission of India during 2006–2009. Lakshmanan was representing Tamil Nadu in the Mullai Periyar Panel appointed by the Hon'ble Supreme Court of India. The panel is headed by Justice A.S. Anand.
He died on August 27, 2020, in Devakottai, Sivaganga Dt, Tamil Nadu.
Justice Bhushan Ramkrishna Gavai
Family Background
Gavai hails from a prominent Scheduled Caste (SC) family following Buddhism, influenced by Dr. B.R. Ambedkar's 1956 mass conversion movement. His father, Ramkrishna Suryabhan (R.S.) Gavai (1929–2015), was a veteran Ambedkarite leader, founder of the Republican Party of India (Gavai faction), Member of Parliament, and Governor of Bihar, Sikkim, and Kerala. R.S. Gavai was a close associate of Ambedkar and played a key role in Dalit politics. His mother, Kamaltai Gavai, was a former school teacher. Gavai's brother, Rajendra Gavai, is a politician, and his daughter, Karishma Gavai, serves as an assistant professor at National Law University, Nagpur. The family remains inspired by Ambedkar's ideals of equality and constitutionalism.
Legal Career
Gavai enrolled as an advocate on 16 March 1985 and began his practice under the mentorship of Bar. Raja S. Bhonsale, a former Advocate General and Bombay High Court judge, until 1987. He then practiced independently at the Bombay High Court from 1987 to 1990, shifting focus to the Nagpur Bench thereafter. Specializing in constitutional, civil, criminal, and administrative law, he represented clients including the Nagpur Municipal Corporation, Amravati Municipal Corporation, Amravati University, and various corporations like SICOM and DCVL.
Key roles included:
- Assistant Government Pleader and Additional Public Prosecutor at the Bombay High Court, Nagpur Bench (August 1992–July 1993).
- Government Pleader and Public Prosecutor for the Nagpur Bench (from 17 January 2000).
Known for his merit-based approach, two of his juniors later became High Court judges. Initially inclined toward politics like his father, Gavai chose law to advocate for marginalized communities.
Judicial Career
Bombay High Court (2003–2019)
- Appointed Additional Judge on 14 November 2003 (nominated by then-CJI V.N. Khare; appointed by President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam).
- Became Permanent Judge on 12 November 2005.
- Served for 16 years, presiding over benches at Mumbai (principal seat), Nagpur, Aurangabad, and Panaji. Handled diverse cases, emphasizing procedural fairness and rights of the underprivileged.
Supreme Court of India (2019–2025)
- Elevated as a Supreme Court Judge on 24 May 2019 (nominated by then-CJI Ranjan Gogoi; appointed by President Ram Nath Kovind). The Collegium highlighted his seniority, integrity, merit, and need for SC representation (he was the first SC judge appointed to the Supreme Court in nine years).
- Served until 13 May 2025, authoring over 464 judgments across 772 benches—an average of more than 70 per year. His work spanned constitutional law (highest share), criminal law (154 judgments), service law (53), civil matters (44), taxation (34), and property issues (26). Peak authorship: 98 judgments in 2022 (71% rate).
Chief Justice of India (2025)
- Sworn in as the 52nd CJI on 14 May 2025 by President Droupadi Murmu, succeeding CJI Sanjiv Khanna. His six-month tenure (until 23 November 2025) made him the second Dalit CJI (after K.G. Balakrishnan) and the first Buddhist CJI, marking a historic milestone for diversity. He succeeded by Justice Surya Kant on 24 November 2025.
- As CJI, he chaired the National Legal Services Authority (NALSA) as executive chairman (from 13 November 2024) and served as ex-officio patron-in-chief. He prioritized case pendency (over 81,000 Supreme Court cases), judicial vacancies, and diversity in appointments.
He also held academic roles as Chancellor of Maharashtra National Law University, Nagpur, and other NLUs.
Notable Judgments and Contributions
Justice Gavai's jurisprudence emphasized constitutional equity, due process, and protection of marginalized rights, often drawing from his personal experiences. He authored or co-authored around 300 landmark decisions. Key ones include:
| Case/Year | Bench Role | Key Ruling/Contribution |
|---|---|---|
| Article 370 Abrogation (2023) | Member, 5-judge Constitution Bench | Unanimously upheld the abrogation as constitutionally valid; directed Jammu & Kashmir statehood restoration and elections by September 2024. |
| Electoral Bonds Scheme (2024) | Member, Constitution Bench (Association for Democratic Reforms v. Union of India) | Struck down the scheme as violative of Article 19(1)(a) (right to information), enhancing electoral transparency. |
| Demonetisation (2023) (Vivek Narayan Sharma v. Union of India) | Authored majority opinion | Upheld the 2016 scheme, affirming Union's power to invalidate currency and RBI consultation. |
| Sub-Classification in SC/ST Quotas (2024) (State of Punjab v. Davinder Singh) | Concurring opinion, 7-judge Bench (6:1) | Allowed sub-classification within SC/ST for equitable affirmative action; stressed excluding "creamy layer" to prevent "double injury" to the most backward, quoting Justice Krishna Iyer. Noted SCs as "heterogeneous" groups. |
| Bulldozer Demolitions (2024) (In Re: Directions in Demolition of Structures) | Co-authored with KV Viswanathan | Declared punitive demolitions without due process unconstitutional; violated rule of law and separation of powers. Called it "immense satisfaction" for protecting shelter rights. |
| Rahul Gandhi Defamation Conviction Stay (2023) | Member Bench | Stayed conviction, highlighting far-reaching impacts like parliamentary disqualification. |
| Prashant Bhushan Contempt (2020) | Member Bench (In Re: Prashant Bhushan) | Held advocate guilty for tweets criticizing the Supreme Court; imposed symbolic Re. 1 fine (or 3 months' imprisonment if unpaid). |
| SC/ST Act Safeguards Review (2019) (Union of India v. State of Maharashtra) | Member Bench | Restored stringent arrest provisions, rejecting preliminary inquiries or approvals to prevent misuse dilution. |
| Presidential Reference No. 1 of 2025 (2025) | Contributed to advisory opinion | Ruled courts cannot impose timelines on President/Governors for bills; rejected "deemed assent" except for prolonged inaction; actions under Articles 200/201 largely non-justiciable. |
| ED Chief Extension (2025) | Headed Bench | Declared extension to SK Mishra illegal, violating 2021 Common Cause judgment limits. |
| Post-Facto Environmental Clearances (2025) (Confederation of Real Estate Developers v. Vanashakti) | Majority (2:1) in review | Allowed exceptional post-facto clearances, recalling a stricter prior ruling; described environmental law as a "living framework." |
| Manish Sisodia Bail (2024) | Member Division Bench | Granted bail after 17 months, emphasizing right to speedy trial. |
| Dying Declarations (2023) (Irfan v. State of U.P.) | Co-authored | Cannot be sole conviction basis; listed 11 factors for reliability in death penalty cases. |
| Arbitration Agreements & Stamp Duty (Recent) | Addressed enforceability | Non-payment of stamp duty does not invalidate agreements, easing arbitration.
|
His judgments often critiqued arbitrary executive actions and reinforced procedural safeguards, like in arrest guidelines and against "bulldozer justice."
Personal Life and Legacy
A devout Buddhist, Gavai's life embodies Ambedkar's vision of education, agitation, and organization for Dalit upliftment. Upon becoming CJI, he paid tribute to Ambedkar and touched his mother's feet, symbolizing respect for roots. He is married (details private) and maintains a low-profile personal life focused on family and social causes.
Gavai's elevation symbolized breaking judicial elitism, with the Supreme Court achieving historic SC representation (three judges in January 2025, including him and Justice Prasanna B. Varale—the first two Buddhists simultaneously). His tenure advanced diversity in appointments but faced criticism for perceived inconsistencies, such as elevating Justice Vipul Pancholi amid controversy, diluting gubernatorial checks, and situational approaches to bail in political cases. Recent X discussions highlight his retirement as a "disappointing" streak for CJIs, citing lapses in enforcing court orders and resisting executive influence, though praising his equity-focused rhetoric. No major awards are noted, but his legacy endures in over 95 years of judicial service, inspiring marginalized communities.
Post-retirement, Gavai plans to advocate for judicial reforms and Ambedkarite causes, leaving an indelible mark as a bridge between constitutional ideals and lived realities.
B. G. Kolse Patil
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
B. G. Kolse Patil [Marathi: बी. जी. कोळसे-पाटिल] is an Indian social activist and former judge of the Bombay High Court in India. He recently joined the Janata Dal (Secular) party as the State Secretary of Maharashtra State.
Early life and education
Patil was born on 18 September 1942, in the village of Guha, Ahmednagar (in present-day Maharashtra state). His parents were landless farm laborers, who worked on the fields of the local landlord for daily wages. He attended a local primary school till 7th grade, after which he dropped out because his parents couldn't afford the high school fees. He worked as a farm-hand for five years and rejoined high school when the government high school in Ahmednagar started providing free secondary education. He completed his education till 12th grade and thereafter attained a B.Sc. degree, supporting his education by working as a daily wage worker and doing several odd jobs. After B.Sc., he secured an appointment as a school teacher in Khadakwasala near Pune. While working as a teacher, he completed his Bachelor of Laws degree from the Law College in Pune and specialized in criminal law thereafter.
Legal career
His career as a lawyer was fairly successful and he gained fame due to his role in a few high-profile trials like the Manwath murder case and the Joshi-Abhyankar serial murders trial. He joined the Pune bar council in 1973. In that capacity, he raised the issue of relaxing the judicial entry age limit by ten years for backward castes and five years for all categories. He was appointed district public prosecutor in 1981 by the government of Maharashtra and continued in that role till 1985. In 1985, at the age of 43, he was appointed as judge of the Bombay High Court.
During his judicial tenure, he delivered strict judgments against tax and octroi evaders. His judgement in "Kanjilal Premjit vs Range Forest Officer" led to an amendment to the Forest Act which held saw-mill owners liable to punishment for buying illegally chopped timber. Another of his notable judgments was in the case of "Associated Bearings Pvt. Ltd. vs the Union of India";[5] he held that taxes evaded by exploiting loopholes should not be retrospectively refunded by the government to corporations because the corporations do not refund the consumers and effectively pass the tax burden to them. His difference of opinion with Justice Shah, in that case, is widely cited in the legal literature. He was also instrumental in getting the government to institute the Aurangabad of the Bombay High Court.
He resigned prematurely from the judiciary in 1990 to pursue social activism full-time.
Activism
After leaving the judiciary, he founded the Lokshashan Andolan (People's Democratic Movement). He has been associated with another former judge-turned-activist Justice P.B. Sawant (former judge of the Supreme Court of India). He spearheaded various grassroots movements throughout Maharashtra. Most of the movements were for social and economic justice for rural, Adivasi, small farmers and displaced people. Notable movements among them include:
An agitation march of landless and small farmers in Maharashtra, led by B. G. Kolse-Patil
Anti Enron protests in Maharashtra in the late 1990s. In 1997, he was arrested under section 151 of the CrPC to prevent him and his associates from taking part in the planned hunger strike against Dhabol Power project.
Movement of farmers and Adivasis against the Alibag SEZ in the 2000s
Protest against the Dow chemicals plant in Shinde-Vasuli near Pune
Movement against the Jaitapur Nuclear Power Project in Konkan
Besides popular movements, he has been part of fact-finding teams which have investigated several matters of civil rights and social justice, such as:
Fact-finding team investigating Khairlanji murder case in 2006
Rehabilitation and resettlement of Manibeli Oustees Sardar Sarovar project inquiry report (Inquiry into the status of Manibeli Oustees conducted by him on behalf of Indian People's Tribunal on Environment & Human Rights)
Concerned Citizens Inquiry on the Nanded blast in February 2007
For his role in these people movements, he was kept under surveillance and profiled by the private surveillance company Stratfor, which had been hired by Dow Chemicals. This was revealed when WikiLeaks released the Stratfor papers.
Politics
In March 2019, he announced his candidature for the 2019 Lok Sabha election from Aurangabad constituency on behalf of the opposition alliance called Vanchit Bahujan Aghadi (Front of the Deprived Majority) on a Janata Dal (Secular) ticket with support from the Congress.
Prof B.C. Nirmal
(Note: There may be some confusion with other individuals or commissions, but based on verified sources, Prof. B.C. Nirmal has no association with the NCSC chairmanship.)
Early Life and Education
- Born on February 19, 1952.
- He holds a B.Sc. degree, followed by LL.M. and Ph.D. in Law.
- His academic journey focused on advanced studies in international law, human rights, and related constitutional aspects.
Academic and Professional Career
- Long association with Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi:
- Served as Professor of Law at the Faculty of Law.
- Former Head and Dean of the Faculty of Law, BHU.
- Recognized as one of the top professors at BHU in legal education.
- Vice Chancellor of the National University of Study and Research in Law (NUSRL), Ranchi, Jharkhand (a prominent National Law University).
- He has been actively involved in legal education reforms, clinical legal education, and challenges in teaching law in India.
- Positions and affiliations:
- Executive Council Member of the Indian Society of International Law.
- Vice President, All India Law Teachers Association (or similar bodies).
- Participated in international forums, such as the Xiamen Academy of International Law (China), where he has been featured as a professor from BHU.
- He has delivered lectures, keynote addresses, and contributed to judicial education, human rights discourse, and international law conferences.
Research and Publications
- Google Scholar citations: Over 140 (as per profiles).
- Key areas: International Law, Human Rights Law, Constitutional Law implications for marginalized groups, legal education.
- Notable contributions include writings on human rights mechanisms, international humanitarian law, and the role of law in social justice.
- He has supervised numerous Ph.D. scholars and been involved in peer-reviewed journals and books on these topics.
- Videos and talks (e.g., on YouTube) feature him discussing Human Rights Law in depth.
Legacy and Recognition
- Widely acclaimed as a mentor to generations of law students and scholars in India.
- His work emphasizes the intersection of law with social justice, human rights protection, and global legal standards.
- He continues to be referenced in academic circles, with tributes (e.g., messages and reels) highlighting his contributions to legal academia.
- No specific information indicates he belongs to SC/ST or a disadvantaged community in public records — his profile aligns with that of a highly accomplished academic from a scholarly background, focused on merit-based achievements in law.
Prof. B.C. Nirmal remains an influential figure in Indian legal education, particularly in international and human rights law, through his teaching, leadership, and scholarly output. If this query refers to a different individual or specific aspect (e.g., any NCSC involvement or publications), provide more details for further clarification!
B.V. Chavan, Justice
B.A.(Hons.), LL.B. -1990
Justice Balasaheb Vishnu Chavan, B.A. (Hons.), LL.B. : Born on 20-12-1931. Appointed as Civil Judge (Junior Division) and Chief Judicial Magistrate (First Class) on 14-9-1960. Worked as Assistant Judge from 1971 to 1974 and as Additional Solicitor and Solicitor from 1974 to 1977. From 1977 to 1981 worked as Deputy Secretary Law and Judicairy Department. Member of the Industrial Court Bombay from 1981 to 1982. Charity Commissioner Maharashtra from 1982 to 1983. Secretary Law and Judiciary Department, Government of Maharashtra from 1983 to April, 1988. Selection Grade District Judge at Aurangabad since 22-4-1988. Appointed as an Additional Judge of the Bombay High Court on 23-11-1
989 and permanent Judge from 24-4-1990. Retired on 20-12-1993.
बदरुद्दीन तैयबजी
मुक्त ज्ञानकोश विकिपीडिया से
बदरुद्दीन तैयबजी
बदरुद्दीन तैयबजी, 1917 ई॰ में
कार्यकाल
1887
पूर्वा धिकारी दादाभाई नौरोजी
जन्म 10 अक्टूबर 1844
मृत्यु 19 अगस्त 1906 (उम्र 61)
लंदन, इंग्लैंड, यूनाइटेड किंगडम
संबंध तैयबजी परिवार
शैक्षिक सम्बद्धता लंदन विश्वविद्यालय
व्यवसाय वकील, समाजसेवी, राजनीतिज्ञ
बदरुद्दीन तैयबजी (10 अक्टूबर 1844 - 11 अगस्त 1906) का जन्म बम्बई अब के मुंबई प्रान्त में एक धनी इस्लामी परिवार में हुआ था। अपनी प्राम्भिक शिक्षा प्राप्त करने के बाद क़ानून की शिक्षा प्राप्त करने ये इंग्लैंड गए और वहाँ से बैरिस्टर बन लौटे। उसके पश्चात मुम्बई हाई कोर्ट में वकालत शुरू किया। जब उन्होंने वकालत शुरू की तब मुम्बई हाई कोर्ट में कोई वकील या जज भरतीय नहीं था। उन्होंने मुंबई में "मुम्बई प्रेसिडेंट एसोसिएशन" था मुसलमानों में शिक्षा का प्रचार करने के लिए "अंजुमन-ए-इस्लाम" नामक संस्था बनाई। फिरोज शाह मेहता, दादाभाई नौरोजी, उमेशचंद्र बैनर्जी के संपर्क में आकर उन्होंने सावर्जनिक कार्यो में भी रुचि लेने प्राम्भ कर दिया। बाद में उनकी नियुक्ति न्यायाधीश पद पर हुई। बाल गंगाधर तिलक पर राष्ट्रद्रोह के मुकदमे में तिलक को जमानत पर छोड़ने का फैसला तैयबजी ने ही किया। 19 अगस्त 1906 को उनकी मृत्यु हो गई। मृत्यु के पूर्व वो भारतीय राष्ट्रीय कांग्रेस के तीसरे अध्यक्ष पद पर भी आसीन हुए।
चित्तरंजन दास
मुक्त ज्ञानकोश विकिपीडिया से
देशबंधु चित्तरंजन दास
देशबंधु चित्तरंजनदास (1870-1925 ई.) सुप्रसिद्ध भारतीय नेता, राजनीतिज्ञ, वकील, कवि तथा पत्रकार थे। उनके पिता का नाम श्री भुवनमोहन दास था, जो सॉलीसिटर थे और बँगला में कविता भी करते थे।
सन् 1890 ई. में बी.ए. पास करने के बाद चितरंजन दास आइ.सी.एस्. होने के लिए इंग्लैंड गए और सन् 1892 ई. में बैरिस्टर होकर स्वदेश लौटे। शुरू में तो वकालत ठीक नहीं चली। पर कुछ समय बाद खूब चमकी और इन्होंने अपना तमादी कर्ज भी चुका दिया।
वकालत में इनकी कुशलता का परिचय लोगों को सर्वप्रथम 'वंदेमातरम्' के संपादक श्री अरविंद घोष पर चलाए गए राजद्रोह के मुकदमे में मिला और मानसिकतला बाग षड्यंत्र के मुकदमे ने तो कलकत्ता हाईकोर्ट में इनकी धाक अच्छी तरह जमा दी। इतना ही नहीं, इस मुकदमे में उन्होंने जो निस्स्वार्थ भाव से अथक परिश्रम किया और तेजस्वितापूर्ण वकालत का परिचय दिया उसके कारण समस्त भारतवर्ष में 'राष्ट्रीय वकील' नाम से इनकी ख्याति फैल गई। इस प्रकार के मुकदमों में ये पारिश्रमिक नहीं लेते थे।
इन्होंने सन् 1906 ई. में कांग्रेस में प्रवेश किया। सन् 1917 ई. में ये बंगाल की प्रांतीय राजकीय परिषद् के अध्यक्ष हुए। इसी समय से वे राजनीति में धड़ल्ले से भाग लेने लगे। सन् 1917 ई. के कलकत्ता कांग्रेस के अध्यक्ष का पद श्रीमती एनी बेसंट को दिलाने में इनका प्रमुख हाथ था। इनकी उग्र नीति सहन न होने के कारण इसी साल श्री सुरेंद्रनाथ बनर्जी तथा उनके दल के अन्य लोग कांग्रेस छोड़कर चले गए और अलग से प्रागतिक परिषद् की स्थापना की। सन् 1918 ई. की कांग्रेस में श्रीमती एनी बेसंट के विरोध के बावजूद प्रांतीय स्थानिक शासन का प्रस्ताव इन्होंने मंजूर करा लिया और रौलट कानून का जमकर विरोध किया। पंजाब कांड की जाँच के लिए नियुक्त की गई कमेटी में भी इन्होंने उल्लेखनीय कार्य किया। इन्होंने महात्मा गांधी के सत्याग्रह का समर्थन किया। लेकिन कलकत्ते में हुए कांग्रेस के विशेष अधिवेशन में इन्होंने उनके असहयोग के प्रस्ताव का विरोध किया। नागपुर अधिवेशन में इन्होंने उनके असहयोग के प्रस्ताव का विरोध किया। नापुर अधिवेशन में ये 250 प्रतिनिधियों का एक दल इस प्रस्ताव का विरोध करने के लिए ले गए थे, लेकिन अंत में इन्होंने स्वयं ही उक्त प्रस्ताव सभा के सम्मुख उपस्थित किया। कांग्रेस के निर्णय के अनुसार इन्होंने वकालत छोड़ दी और अपनी सारी सपत्ति मेडिकल कॉलेज तथा स्त्रियों के अस्पताल को दे डाली। इनके इस महान् त्याग को देखकर जनता इन्हें 'देशबंधु' कहने लगी।
असहयोग आंदोलन में जिन विद्यार्थियों ने स्कूल कॉलेज छोड़ दिए थे उनके लिए इन्होंने ढाका में 'राष्ट्रीय विद्यालय' की स्थापना की। आसाम के चाय बागानों के मजदूरों की दु:स्थिति ने भी कुछ समय तक इनका ध्यान आकर्षित कर रखा था।
सन् 1921 ई. में कांग्रेस ने असहयोग आंदोलन के लिए दस लाख स्वयंसेवक माँगे थे। उसकी पूर्ति के लिए इन्होंने प्रयत्न किया और खादी विक्रय आदि कांग्रेस के कार्यक्रम को संपन्न करना आरंभ कर दिया। आंदोलन की मजबूत होते देखकर ब्रिटिश सरकार ने इसे अवैध करार दिया। ये सपत्नीक पकड़े गए और दोनों को छह छह महीने की सजा हुई। सन् 1921 ई. में अहमदाबाद कांग्रेस के ये अध्यक्ष चुने गए। लेकिन ये उस समय जेल में थे अतएव इनके प्रतिनिधि के रूप में हकीम अजमल खाँ ने अध्यक्ष का कार्यभार सँभाला। इनका अध्यक्षीय भाषण श्रीमती सरोजिनी नायडू ने पढ़कर सुनाया। ये जब छूटकर आए उस समय आंदोलन लगभग समाप्त हो चुका था। बाहर से आंदोलन करने के बजाए इन्होंने कांउसिलों में घुसकर भीतर से अड़ंगा लगाने की नीति की घोषणा की। गया कांग्रेस में ये अध्यक्ष थे लेकिन इनका यह प्रस्ताव वहाँ स्वीकार न हो सका। अतएव इन्होंने अध्यक्ष पद से त्यागपत्र दे दिया और स्वराज्य दल की स्थापना की। कांग्रेस को उनकी नीति माननी पड़ी और उनका कांउसिल प्रवेश का प्रस्ताव सितंबर, 1923 ई. में दिल्ली में हुए कांग्रेस के अतिरिक्त अधिवेशन में स्वीकार हो गया।
प्रस्ताव के अनुसार ये काउंसिल में घुसे। इनका दल बंगाल काउंसिल में निर्विरोध चुना गया। इन्हांने मंत्रिमंडल बनाना अस्वीकार कर दिया और मंत्रियों के वेतनों को मान्यता देना नामंजूर कर मांटफोर्ड सुधारों की दुर्गति कर डाली। सन् 1924-25 में इन्होंने कलकत्ता नगर महापालिका में अपने पक्ष के काफी लोग घुसाए और स्वयं मेयर हुए।
इन दिनों कांग्रेस पर इनके स्वराज्य दल का पूरा कब्जा था और ये स्वयं उसके कर्ता-धर्ता थे। पटना के अधिवेशन में इन्होंने कांग्रेस की सदस्यता के लिए सूत कातने की अनिवार्य शर्त को ऐच्छिक करार दिया। लगभग इसी समय गोपीनाथ साहा नामक एक बंगाली व्यक्ति ने एक अंग्रेज की हत्या की और सरकार तथा इनके दल में झगड़ा शुरू हुआ। सरकार ने एक विज्ञप्ति प्रकाशित की और संदेह में 80 लोगों की पकड़ा। कलकत्ता कार्पोरेशन ने भी सरकार की इस नीति का विरोध किया।
सन् 1924 में बंगाल की प्रांतीय परिषद् ने गोपीनाथ साहा के त्याग की प्रशंसा की तथा अभिनंदन का प्रस्ताव स्वीकार किया और इन्होंने उसे मान्यता दी। लेकिन इनकी इस नीति का भारत में तथा इंग्लैंड में गलत अर्थ लगाया गया।
सन् 1925 में उपर्युक्त सरकारी विज्ञप्ति की मुख्य धाराएँ बंगाल क्रिमिनल लॉ अमेंडमेंट बिल में सम्मिलित की गईं। स्वराज्य दल ने बिल अस्वीकार कर दिया किंतु सरकार ने अपने विशेष अधिकार से कानून पास करा लिया। इन्होंने राजनीतिक शस्त्र के रूप में हिंसा का प्रयोग करने की कटु आलोचना की और इस संबंध में दो पत्रक प्रकाशित किए। साथ ही इसी प्रकार का एक पत्रक इन्होंने सरकार के पास भी भेजा। सरकार ने इसे सहयोग की ओर पहला कदम समझा। इस दृष्टि से दोनों पक्षों में कुछ वार्ता शुरू होने की संभावना समझी जा रही थी कि 6 जून 1925 को इनका देहावसान हो गया।
श्री चित्तरंजनदास के व्यत्तित्व के कई पहलू थे। वे उच्च कोटि के राजनीतिज्ञ तथा नेता तो थे ही, वे बँगला भाषा के अच्छे कवि तथा पत्रकार भी थे। बंगाल की जनता इनके कविरूप का बहुत आदर करती थी। इनके समय के बंग साहित्य के आंदोलनों में इनका प्रमुख हाथ रहा करता था। 'सागरसंगीत', 'अंतर्यामी', 'किशोर किशोरी' इनके काव्यग्रंथ हैं। 'सांगरसंगीत' का इन्होंने तथा श्री अरविंद घोष ने मिलकर अंग्रेजी में 'सांग्ज़ आव दि सी' नाम से अनुवाद किया और उसे प्रकाशित किया। 'नारायण' नामक वैष्णव-साहित्य-प्रधान मासिक पत्रिका इन्होंने काफी समय तक चलाई। सन् 1906 में प्रारंभ हुए 'वंदे मातरम्' नामक अंग्रेजी पत्र के संस्थापक मंडल तथा संपादकमंडल दोनों के ये प्रमुख सदस्य थे और बंगाल स्वराज्य दल का मुखपत्र 'फार्वर्ड' तो इन्हीं की प्रेरणा और जिम्मेदारी पर निकला तथा चला।
राजनीतिक नेता के लिए आवश्यक सतत जूझते रहने का गुण इनमें प्रचुर मात्रा में विद्यमान था। ये परम त्यागी वृत्ति के महापुरुष थे। इन्होंने कवि का संवेदनक्षम हृदय और सज्जनोचित उदारता पाई थी। विरुद्ध पक्ष का मर्म-स्थान ढूँढ निकालने की असाधारण कुशलता इनमें थी। एक बार निश्चय कर लेने के बाद उसे कार्यान्वित करने के लिए ये निरंतर प्रयत्नशील रहते थे। इन्हें असाधारण लोकप्रियता मिली। बेलगाँव कांग्रेस में इन्होंने यह इच्छा व्यक्त की थी कि 148 नंबर, रूसा रोड, कलकत्ता वाला इनका मकान स्त्रियों और बच्चों का अस्पताल बन जाए तो उन्हें बड़ी शांति मिलेगी। उनकी मृत्यु के बाद महात्मा गांधी ने सी.आर. दस स्मारक निधि के रूप में दस लाख रुपए इकट्ठे किए और भारत के इस महान् सुपुत्र की यह अंतिम इच्छा पूर्ण की।
Chittaranjan Das Biography(English)
The great lawyer Chittaranjan Das was born on Nov 5, 1870.He belonged to a highly educated family with rich cultural surroundings. Bhuvan Mohan, his father was a solicitor by profession and also worked as a reporter and editor in the English church weekly, the Brahmo Public Opinion.
Chittaranjan Das completed his graduation in 1890 from Presidency College, Kolkata, West Bengal. He went abroad to England to sit for the Indian Civil Service examination. He failed to clear the examination. When he returned to India in 1893, he began practicing law in the Calcutta High Court.His career rose to fame when he successfully defended Aurobindo Ghose in the 1908 Alipur bomb case. Das set up an undergraduate union and also raised his voice for the use of Bengali language in university examinations. He substantially contributed with Bipin Chandra Pal and Aurobindo Ghose in writing Bande Mataram, an English weekly. He also tried to instill the ideas of Swaraj among the young Indian freedom fighters. He was involved in active politics from 1917 to 1925.
Chittaranjan Das also put the idea of reconstructing villages through the incorporation of local self-government and cooperative credit society systems. He also wanted to give a new face to the cottage industry. He became a prominent figure in the Indian National Congress, known for his innate skills in public speaking and political insight.
He joined hands with Gandhi in the Non -Cooperation Movement. In 1921, along with his wife and son, he was arrested by the British Government. Das realized that political stability could only be brought in India by reuniting the Hindus and Muslims. He always believed in self-rule and attained the title of Deshabandhu meaning friend of the country.
Das always had a flair for writing and this was evident from his literary magazines, Narayan, Mala, Sagar Sangit, Kishore-Kishoree and Antaryami.
Like Gandhiji, Das believed in the idea of non-violence. He felt that education was mandatory for our country. He laid emphasis on women liberation and aided Ishwar Chandra Vidyasagar’s movement for widow re-marriage. He passed away on June 16, 1925.
Facts and Information about Chittaranjan Das
Born 5 November 1870
Religion Hinduism
Nationality Indian
Father Bhuban Mohan Das
Died 16 June 1925 (aged 55)
Education Educated in England,
Profession before joining politics Lawyer (Barrister)
Known for contribution as Major figure in the Indian independence movement
Political Career Indian National Congress , Swaraj Party
If some one khow his caste. Please inform me , In my view he was sc. Or kayasth. Kayasth were also counted in sc in old days history. However .Kayasth is not included in Hindu Varn System.
C.S.Rajan, Justice
The Secret of the Temple : The discovery of treasure worth billions of dollars shakes southern India.
By Jake Halpern
Nobody knew for certain what was hidden beneath the ancient Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, in Trivandrum, India. But a lawyer named Ananda Padmanabhan had a hunch. According to legend, treasure was sealed in the temple vaults, and Padmanabhan, who was passionate about history, knew that in centuries past maharajas had performed a ceremony in which they weighed local princes approaching adulthood, then donated to the temple an equivalent weight in gold. Padmanabhan believed that these riches were still hidden in the basement, uncounted and unguarded.
Padmanabhan, who is thirty-nine, has spent his life in Trivandrum, which is at the southwestern tip of India, in the state of Kerala. His home and his law office are on historic Brahmin Street, just outside the gates of the temple, which has a monumental seven-story tower whose pale granite façade is a tapestry of stone, etched with ornate images of gods, nymphs, sprites, and demons. On the day that I had arranged to meet Padmanabhan, in mid-October, I found him in the middle of the street, barefoot, in a downpour. He was staring at the temple, as if in a trance. I tried to get his attention, but couldn’t. Eventually, a clerk from his office brought him an umbrella, which he took without turning his head.
After several minutes, Padmanabhan looked at me, smiled, and explained that he had been praying. There was a festival that day, and the temple’s custodians had removed an idol from the sanctum sanctorum and were parading it around a courtyard. He was hoping to get a glimpse of it. The idol, he told me, “is like an incarnation of God, so it is as if God himself is coming out of the temple.” Like many observant Hindus, Padmanabhan believes that a temple’s deity—in this case, the supreme god Vishnu—resides within its walls. Worshippers come to make offerings of flowers, incense, silver, and gold. Whatever wealth accumulates belongs to the deity. Padmanabhan told me that it had become his driving purpose in life to serve Vishnu and, in so doing, protect the deity’s hoard. He explained, “In Lord Krishna’s Bhagavad Gita, he says we are only small things before the great lord. So if he says, ‘Dance,’ we dance, and if he says, ‘Sit,’ we sit. I am just a mosquito before him.”
Deities can actually own property in India, though the law treats them as minors and they must be represented by an official guardian. At the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, the Maharaja of Travancore has this role. Travancore was a kingdom that once encompassed much of southern India. Although it ceased to exist in 1947, when India became independent, the maharajas have continued to preside over the temple, both as spiritual leaders and as custodians of the deity’s wealth. For centuries, the royal family’s management of the temple received little scrutiny: there were no complete or easily accessible records of what the deity owned, or how the maharaja used this wealth to maintain the temple. Nobody challenged the arrangement until 2007, when Padmanabhan brought a lawsuit against the temple administration, on behalf of two devotees.
Padmanabhan and his clients argued that the head of the royal family, ninety-year-old Marthanda Varma, had mismanaged the site, and that the government should appoint a new trustee to safeguard the deity’s wealth. Even though Varma is not officially a maharaja, as his ancestors were, he is revered in Kerala, and many of his supporters refer to him as the King. Padmanabhan thought that his lawsuit might prove unpopular, but before long several other Indians joined the case, including the leader of a union of temple employees, who believed that treasures had been taken from the site.
In the lawsuit, Padmanabhan alleged that a series of kallaras—treasure vaults—existed beneath the temple, at and ththey were being looted. In any case, the temple was poorly guarded; as one member of the royal family told me, until recently security at the temple consisted of men “holding wooden sticks.”
The temple’s executive, Sasidharan Nair, denied the charges of mismanagement and said, in a sworn statement, that “the allegation that there is a treasure-hoard kept in some kallaras is false”; there was nothing beneath the temple except a few unused rooms “covered with cobwebs and dust.” The plaintiffs, Nair said, were spreading “old wives’ tales and gossipy rumors.”
Padmanabhan took me back to his office, which is filled with books and has two swords on display. He sat behind a large desk and asked me if I wanted tea. When I said yes, he picked up a remote control with a single button and pressed it. A clerk soon arrived, carrying a tray with two glasses of tea.
I asked Padmanabhan what had made him so confident that there was treasure. “These are all historical books,” he said, gesturing at his library. “It is all here.” He pressed the remote control again, and the clerk reappeared. Padmanabhan uttered a command in Malayalam, the regional language. The clerk squeezed between the back of Padmanabhan’s chair and a bookcase, removed a large volume, handed it over, and vanished. Padmanabhan opened the book to a chapter on the temple, and read aloud a sentence that he had underlined: “A cellar underneath the shrine secures the temple jewels.”
Perhaps I looked unconvinced, because Padmanabhan pressed his remote control once again. The clerk returned and retrieved another book. Padmanabhan read me a passage noting that, in 1855, the regional government had “faced financial difficulties” and, to cover its expenses, had taken out a sizable loan from the temple. Padmanabhan said, “People who studied history knew that treasure was there.”
The temple amassed much of its riches in the early eighteenth century. At the time, the Maharaja of Travancore was battling local chieftains. His main rivals were known, collectively, as the Lords of the Eight Houses. One day, these men gathered at an inn, south of Trivandrum, and plotted to assassinate him, during a festival at the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple. The plan might have succeeded had it not been for an old man—the keeper of the well attached to the inn—who overheard the conspirators and sent word to the Maharaja. On the day of the festival, the Maharaja showed up at the temple armed, with a contingent of soldiers; he eventually ordered a number of rebels to be executed, seized their wealth, levelled their homes, and sold their wives and children into slavery.
The Maharaja went on to conquer nearby kingdoms, whose wealth was considerable. As the writer Gurcharan Das has chronicled, Indian kings and merchants had been accumulating profits from the spice trade for nearly two thousand years. In ancient Rome, senators lamented that local women used too many Indian luxuries, and, in 77 A.D., Pliny the Elder proclaimed that India had become “the sink of the world’s gold.” In the sixteenth century, the Portuguese echoed this sentiment, complaining that too much of their silver from the New World was going to India; after the British arrived on the subcontinent, they made similar protests.
The historian T. P. Sankrankutty Nair has written several books about the Kingdom of Travancore. When I visited him at his home, in Trivandrum, he told me that the Maharaja “was a very cruel man” who, after murdering so many, yearned for absolution. “As repentance, he dedicated his entire kingdom to God, in 1750,” Nair explained. “Whatever things he had collected by defeating all those kings—all the valuables, gold, silver, ornaments, and coins—he gave to the Lord.” This wealth, Nair said, was locked up beneath the temple. But it wasn’t clear what happened to those riches over the centuries. “We never cared to look into that,” he told me, somewhat defensively. “It was not the concern of us historians to study the wealth of the temples. It was beyond our jurisdiction.”
He motioned to me to follow him into his living room. On the walls were black-and-white photographs of his deceased relatives. Several photographs were adorned with flowers. Nair, like many Hindus, reveres his ancestors almost as deities; one of his grandfathers, he said, had kept his most valuable possessions in a small wooden box, which Nair had inherited. “I’ve never ventured to open it,” he said.
Why not?
“Probably it contains wealth, probably it contains a diary and some letters written by him,” he said. Many people in India had boxes like this. “Sometimes these boxes contain valuables and sometimes nothing—but, because of our belief in ancestors, we don’t care to open it. We keep them as something almost divine.”
Nair offered to show me the box, but his house was in disarray because of a construction project; after searching for a few minutes, he told me that he wasn’t certain where it was. He didn’t seem particularly concerned. His relaxed attitude about his grandfather’s box seemed similar to his feelings about the temple’s treasury. Did he ever worry that someone might try to rob the site? No, he said. “Whatever is there will be preserved by the deity.”
Like Nair, most residents of Trivandrum had not been clamoring for the temple’s vaults to be searched. This had initially puzzled me. In America—a nation of conspiracy-obsessed newshounds that places high value on “closure”—it’s inconceivable that a mysterious, locked door would be left alone. (Recall Geraldo Rivera breaking into Al Capone’s vault, in the nineteen-eighties.) But in India the wealth stored in the vaults of Hindu temples is viewed largely in spiritual, not monetary, terms. William Harman, a scholar of Hinduism at the University of Tennessee, told me, “People make deals with deities, and if they receive what they want they pay up.” Any treasure inside the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple, Harman said, embodied “centuries of vows.”
I read several histories of Travancore but could find no detailed accounts of the temple’s wealth. One of the most popular books was written by a member of the royal family, Princess Lakshmi Bayi; it makes no mention of a treasury, or of underground kallaras. However, I did come across a tantalizing account, from 1870, of life in Trivandrum by a British missionary named Samuel Mateer. After noting that Europeans were prevented, “by native prejudice,” from entering the temple, he added, “It is said that there is a deep well inside the temple, into which immense riches are thrown year by year; and in another place, in a hollow covered by a stone, a great golden lamp, which was lit over 120 years ago and still continues burning.”
One day, I visited the central archive of Trivandrum, whose records go back to the thirteen-hundreds. At first glance, the place looked like a warehouse for wicker mats. Until a century ago, scribes, using metal styluses, recorded the temple’s activities on long palm leaves, and the archive’s hallways were lined with shelves containing bundles of dried fronds. An archivist showed me one leaf that was a yard long and an inch wide. It was the original deed from 1750, in which the Maharaja gave his kingdom to the deity. There were ten million leaves like it in the archive. “A careful researcher who read through these leaves would get a sense of the wealth hidden in the temple,” an archivist told me. “But it would be a big task—an enormous task.”
R.Chandrankutty is a leader of the Indian National Trade Union Congress—the union that lent its support to Padmanabhan’s suit. In Trivandrum, the organization represents roughly fifty temple employees, including clerks, sweepers, and priests. Some of these members have reported that valuables have been stolen from the temple, including a large ivory flute and an ancient ring adorned with nine precious stones.
When I met with Chandrankutty, at the union office, he offered more details, alleging that the flute was taken from a storage area containing ceremonial items, and the ring from the finger of the main idol, inside the sanctum sanctorum. Whoever stole the ring, he said, had replaced it with a cheap replica. He suspected that other temple employees, with the knowledge of the management, were to blame.
Chandrankutty said that after voicing his concerns to the temple’s assistant officer, to no avail, he decided to join the lawsuit. But this choice came at a price, he claimed: another union member—a senior clerk named K. Padmanabha Das—had been nearly killed for his involvement in the case. Chandrankutty then informed me that Das would be arriving shortly to tell the story himself.
Das, in his mid-fifties, was soft-spoken, and covered his potbelly with a loose-fitting dhoti. He said that, as a youth, he had worked at the temple as a percussion artist, in an orchestra of five players. Over three decades, he had worked his way up to senior clerk. Starting in 1993, Das noticed that objects occasionally went missing from the temple: precious stones adorning the main idol, a silver pot, the ivory flute. He said of the flute, “It was quite old, made out of a single tusk of an elephant.”
Not long after Das learned of Padmanabhan’s lawsuit, he joined it. His participation was crucial, Padmanabhan told me, because he was a credible eyewitness who had worked at the site for decades.
Das was working at the temple on the day that he was attacked. He says that he saw several men attempting to load six large ceremonial lamps into a van; they told him that the lamps were going to Pattom Palace, where Varma resides. “I told them, very strictly, that I wouldn’t allow them to do that,” Das recalled. Later that evening, as Das was returning home, two men accosted him and doused him with acid.
Padmanabhan, hearing the news, rushed to the hospital. “Flesh was coming off Das’s body,” he recalled. It took Das months to recover. When I asked Padmanabhan why Das had been attacked, he replied, “He had not yet given testimony, and they probably wanted to stop him.”
The royal family denies any involvement in the acid incident. The family’s lawyer says that Das concocted the story, and was subsequently fired from the temple for improper conduct. Das, for his part, says that he was dismissed only after he made it clear that he would not remove himself from the lawsuit.
In the union office, Das told me, “I will show you what they did.” He pulled up his dhoti and his shirt, revealing ghastly scars along his thighs and his torso.
Padmanabhan, based on his research, believed that there were at least six kallaras beneath the temple: two containing ornaments used daily by the priests, two containing ornaments used only at festivals, and two that were very rarely opened. He suspected that the biggest hoard was in these last two kallaras, later dubbed Vault A and Vault B. Yet he feared that all the vaults were vulnerable to theft, and so when he filed his lawsuit, in September, 2007, he requested an injunction to restrain the temple management, and its “henchmen,” from touching the vaults.
A few days later, Marthanda Varma gave an interview to a local Malayalam-language newspaper, the Kerala Kaumudi, in which he admitted that there was a “secret vault” in the temple containing “wealth accumulated by the Travancore royal family over generations.” The hoard, he said, had been growing since 800 A.D., and included “precious gold ornaments and coins from various countries.” He added that he had never seen the treasure, and that the vault had not been opened since 1885.
Padmanabhan was pleased to have the treasure’s existence confirmed, but he was alarmed by Varma’s suggestion that it belonged to the royal family. (Varma’s family insists that he was misquoted.) As Padmanabhan knew, after India became independent, in 1947, the royal family of Travancore surrendered its power to the Indian government. In return, the family’s leader at the time—Varma’s older brother—was allowed to collect a “privy purse,” essentially a trust fund doled out to former princes by the Indian government. He was also permitted to keep his status as ruler of Travancore, enabling him to preside over the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple. Then, in 1971, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi led a populist campaign that culminated with the Twenty-sixth Amendment to the Indian Constitution, which abolished the privy purse and stripped royals of their “ruler” status. As Padmanabhan saw it, this legal change meant that Marthanda Varma had no business asserting control over the temple.
The lower court in Trivandrum agreed with virtually every aspect of Padmanabhan’s argument, saying, “This great temple should not be left to the whims and fancies of certain private individuals.” The court ordered the government to take over the temple, and appointed two commissioners to serve as witnesses whenever temple workers opened a vault, including those used for festival ornaments.
Early one morning in October, 2008, as the temple prepared to hold its biggest annual festival, Padmanabhan accompanied the two commissioners into a storage area behind the sanctum sanctorum. Confirming Padmanabhan’s suspicions, they found doors to six kallaras. They unlocked and entered the two kallaras containing the festival ornaments, which were later dubbed Vaults C and D. Inside, they found dazzling objects, including a golden bow and arrow, umbrellas made with gold rods, and a golden throne for the deity embedded with hundreds of precious gems. The items were probably worth millions of dollars. It was difficult to know if anything was missing, because there was no detailed registry, but the commissioners reported, among other things, that someone had taken forty-four hooks off a golden umbrella and replaced them with hooks made from inferior metal. The temple staff had shown “carelessness,” the commissioners noted, and added that current security measures were inadequate.
Padmanabhan was eager to have the remaining vaults opened, but he had to wait: the royal family had appealed to the High Court of Kerala. Lawyers for the royal family argued that Varma’s ancestors had ruled Travancore for more than a thousand years, and had a legacy of presiding over the temple as spiritual leaders. For centuries, a maharaja from the family had led processions at the temple, and had escorted the idol when it was marched to the sea, twice a year, for a ritual bathing. By custom, the maharaja even had to ask the deity for permission to leave town. This special relationship, the royal family contended, had not been severed by the Twenty-sixth Amendment. Moreover, the royals had not been involved in any theft; on the contrary, Varma had regularly contributed money to make up the temple’s budget deficits.
“You noticed nobody gives a damn about beached minnows.”
The legal fight intensified when Padmanabhan’s seventy-year-old uncle, T. P. Sundararajan—the senior partner in his law practice—joined the lawsuit. He tried to get the royal family’s appeal dismissed by filing a writ with the High Court that challenged Varma’s claim to authority over the temple. Sundararajan, who was extremely pious, quickly became the public face of the case. He visited the temple many times each day, starting at 3:30 a.m., and looked more like a guru than like a lawyer. He dressed in a dhoti, had a wispy white beard that trailed down to his waist, and regularly smeared across his forehead a tilaka, a pitchfork-shaped design that signifies enlightenment. He had once been regarded as a friend of the royal family—he had been a confidant of Varma’s older brother, the previous maharaja. But he was not close to Varma.
Before becoming a lawyer, Sundararajan had been a police officer, then an agent for the Intelligence Bureau of India. He had also served as a member of the security team charged with protecting Indira Gandhi. His boss at the Intelligence Bureau, Mayankote Kelath Narayanan, is now the governor of West Bengal. Narayanan told me that Sundararajan “had a brilliant mind,” but that what really set him apart was his high ethical standards. “He would never make any compromises,” Narayanan said. Sundararajan, he argued, had “nothing to gain” by involving himself in the temple lawsuit, and had acted only because “he felt that things were not being done according to the rule book.”
After leaving the Intelligence Bureau, Sundararajan became a law professor, and also took on public-interest cases. In one landmark suit, he helped a client claim an inheritance that was denied to her because she was a woman. He also helped a woman named Nalini Netto win a sexual-harassment lawsuit against a powerful Indian official. Netto told me that Sundararajan had given her “the spiritual strength to stand up through the whole thing.”
In January, 2011, Sundararajan’s arguments met with approval from the High Court of Kerala, which upheld the lower court’s ruling, saying that it was “absurd” to call Sri Padmanabhaswamy a “family temple.” Nor did the royal family have a right to oversee the temple’s wealth: “Since the deity is a perpetual minor in the eyes of the law, the court has jurisdiction to protect it.” The court concluded, “We feel it is high time regulatory measures are made in the State to prevent plundering of public money in the name of God and faith.”
The royal family appealed again—this time to the Supreme Court of India. In May, the Supreme Court made a bracing announcement. Before it ruled on the stewardship of the temple, a team of “observers” would inspect the remaining vaults that supposedly contained treasure. Vaults A and B, which had “reportedly not been opened for more than a century,” would be opened, inspected, then “closed and sealed again.”
The inspection of these vaults took place on June 30, 2011. Sundararajan was among the observers, along with several archeologists and gemologists. Also in the group was C. S. Rajan, a seventy-three-year-old former judge who had sat on the Kerala High Court.
The Supreme Court placed a gag order on the men who entered the vaults, and in the days that followed none of them spoke to the press, including Rajan, who refused to talk when I called him on the phone. A month later, I flew to New Delhi and showed up at his home. Because I had come a long way, and his duties to the Supreme Court were finished, Rajan agreed to describe what he had seen. He said that it had been the greatest day of his life.
Upon entering the temple, Rajan and the others headed toward the sanctum sanctorum, where the main idol reclines. The idol is a likeness of Padmanabha—a slumbering god who is one of Vishnu’s many incarnations—and it contains twelve thousand and eight sacred stones that were collected centuries ago from the Gandaki River, in Nepal, and carried to Trivandrum by elephant. The observers passed through the sanctum sanctorum and visited an adjacent storage area, where they came to the six vaults, including A and B, which had metal-grille doors that looked as if they had not been opened in a very long time.
On a stone wall above Vault A was an embossed image of a cobra. Princess Lakshmi Bayi, in her history of the temple, notes that there are many stories “passed down through chronicles and word of mouth” about “snakes of high breed” that appeared when “the Temple came under threat,” offering interlopers a warning. Snakes, she writes, are considered “the guardians of the moral and material wealth” of the temple. In the days to come, the image of the cobra would widely be seen as an omen.
The doors to Vaults A and B required multiple keys, which had been entrusted to Varma and the temple’s current executive, V. K. Harikumar. The observers used the keys to open the metal-grille door to Vault B, and discovered a sturdy wooden door just behind it. They opened this door as well, and encountered a third door, made of iron, which was jammed shut. So they turned their attention to Vault A. Once again, they unlocked two outer doors, one of metal and the other of wood. They entered a small room with a huge rectangular slab on the floor, like a toppled tombstone. It took five men more than thirty minutes to move the slab. Beneath it they found a narrow, pitch-black passage, barely wide enough for an adult to get through, leading down a short flight of steps. It was just like the “hollow covered by a stone” described by the British missionary. Before the observers descended, a team of firemen arrived and used special equipment to pump oxygen into the enclosure. At the bottom of the stairs was the vault.
One of the observers was a fifty-nine-year-old attorney named M. Balagovindan, who was Sundararajan’s personal lawyer and a trusted friend. Balagovindan also spoke with me, and he recalled his first glimpse of the treasure: “When they removed the granite stone, it was almost perfectly dark, except for a small amount of light coming in through the doorway behind us. As I looked into the darkened vault, what I saw looked like stars glittering in a night sky when there is no moon. Diamonds and gems were sparkling, reflecting what little light there was. Much of the wealth had originally been stored in wooden boxes, but, with time, the boxes had cracked and turned to dust. And so the gems and gold were just sitting in piles on the dusty floor. It was amazing.”
According to Rajan, the observers instructed temple employees to haul everything from Vault A upstairs, for inspection. It took fifteen men all day. Rajan said that beholding the treasure was a “divine moment.” There were countless gold rings, bangles, and lockets, many encrusted with gems. And there were gold chains, each studded with jewels and eighteen feet long—the length of the main idol. Rajan told me that coin experts estimated that the vault held approximately a hundred thousand gold coins, spanning centuries of trade: Roman, Napoleonic, Mughal, Dutch. He also described seeing a set of solid-gold body armor, known as an angi, built to adorn the main idol.
The vault also contained loose diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones. According to Balagovindan, the most impressive gems were the large diamonds, some of which were a hundred and ten carats—“the size of a large thumb,” as he put it. The archeologists and gemologists estimated that a small solid-gold idol of Vishnu, encrusted with hundreds of gems, was worth thirty million dollars. Though Balagovindan marvelled at what he saw, his client, Sundararajan, appeared indifferent. “He showed no interest in the gold,” Balagovindan recalled. “He only entered to see if there were any more inner vaults, within the vault.” (There weren’t.) Sundararajan was a true ascetic, Balagovindan said.
So far, no one has formally calculated the value of the treasure found in Vault A. But Harikumar, the temple’s executive—who has now seen the hoard on at least two occasions—has estimated that it is worth at least twenty billion dollars. Ananda Bose, the former director of the National Museum, in New Delhi, briefly led a team that has been charged with documenting the treasure. Bose told me that a proper assessment would likely take a year. He had done some research on other famed hoards—including those found in the tombs of the Egyptian pyramids—and said that none of them appeared to rival the temple’s treasure. “Maybe once in a thousand years something like this will happen—finding such massive wealth,” he told me.
It may always remain a mystery whether Vault A has ever been robbed. Harikumar initially assured me that nobody had entered it for more than a century, but then admitted that there were no records. As he put it, “There is no paper that I have to show that it was opened at such-and-such a date.” But if there were no precise records, how could he be certain that nothing had been stolen? “I am sorry, I cannot answer that question,” he said. “It is believed that nothing has been stolen.”
In the days after Vault A was opened, the temple was surrounded by news crews and protesters—most of them zealous devotees, who feared that the deity’s wealth would be taken from the temple. Padmanabhan and his uncle, Sundararajan, became targets of anger. Padmanabhan received death threats; his office was attacked, and his car was vandalized. Policemen were assigned to protect him. Mobs gathered outside his office, holding posters that read “Recover the lost and encroached temple property and use it for temple needs,” and accusing Sundararajan of having “looted God’s property.” At one point, protesters even brought in a water buffalo—a symbol of death in Hinduism—with a placard around its neck that said, “I am Sundararajan.”
Sundararajan was deeply shaken. His cousin N. Rangachary told me that Sundararajan couldn’t understand how his efforts had led to his becoming “ostracized” and “shunned by his own people.”
“What did you think of that book that I already know everyone else in the world’s opinion about?”
Roughly two weeks later, on July 16th, Sundararajan went to bed with a fever. Initially, no one worried. “Why would anyone think it was serious?” Padmanabhan said. But later that night his mother told him that his uncle was severely ill. Padmanabhan went to his uncle’s bedside. “A little after midnight, my uncle was looking better,” Padmanabhan recalled. “I told him, ‘Don’t worry, you are perfectly all right.’ He replied, ‘No, I have just a few more hours left.’ ” Early that morning, Sundararajan stood up, looked around the room at his relatives, smiled, and fell over dead. The next day, Indian newspapers announced his death, alongside speculation that he had succumbed to “the curse of the cobra.”
Rajan told me that the innermost door to Vault B had three latches, and that one of them was jammed, preventing the team of observers from opening the vault. The observers considered forcing their way in, but deemed this improper; they decided to hire a locksmith. Then, in mid-July, before the locksmith came, the royal family sent an affidavit to the Supreme Court asking it not to open Vault B, at least for the time being, as doing so might compromise the spiritual integrity of the temple.
Lakshmi Bayi, the princess who wrote a history of the temple, was among those in the royal family who felt that the vault should be left undisturbed. One afternoon, I met her at Kowdiar Palace, her residence in Trivandrum. The palace, a grand, dilapidated structure with a hundred and six rooms, is furnished with old teak furniture, dusty rugs, and stunning oil paintings depicting scenes from Hindu epics. Stray dogs roamed the palace’s overgrown gardens, and a member of the royal family warned me not to leave my shoes on the front stoop, as a dog might take them.
The Princess, who is petite and middle-aged, was dressed in a simple cotton sari. She described herself as not a “servant” of the deity but his “slave.”
“A servant has the right to leave his master,” she said. “If I don’t like to work with you, I walk out and I say goodbye, but a slave has no option of independent action. He is forever bound to his master’s feet. So we prefer that.”
Though she had never laid eyes on Vault B, she believed that it was connected to the temple’s sanctum sanctorum by a “spiritual charge,” which emitted special vibrations that could be felt only “if you are exceptionally lucky.” This energy should not be disturbed, she told me, and the picture of the cobra outside Vault A gave a clear warning.
I asked what would happen if the energy was disturbed. The Princess told me a story she’d heard about an Indian temple that contained the rarest of treasures: a levitating idol. “The figure of the idol remained suspended in the air,” she explained. This was a “very wonderful thing,” and it continued to hover until workers began renovating the temple; suddenly, the idol came crashing down. She worried that tampering with Vault B might cause a similar disaster. Several gurus had even warned her that opening it would “bring danger and damage” to the city of Trivandrum.
A few days later, I met the head of the royal family, Marthanda Varma, at Pattom Palace—a vast wooden structure, painted white and crowned with a steep red tile roof. Next to the palace was an open-air garage containing vintage cars, including a perfectly preserved blue 1955 Mercedes 180D. One of Varma’s aides escorted me into a sitting room and told me that I should not broach the issue of treasure with “His Highness.”
Several minutes later, a very thin elderly man, dressed in plain cotton and leaning heavily on a cane, made his way down the long hallway leading to the sitting room. We soon got into a discussion about finances, and he tried to explain what, exactly, was his wealth and what was the deity’s. He said, “I have a house, I live in it, but it isn’t mine”—it belonged to the deity of the temple. Did this mean that he would never sell Pattom Palace? “Yeah, sure,” he replied, then added, “In modern life, sometimes your intention can be overruled.” When I asked him to elaborate, he said, “According to the circumstances, whatever may be your desire, your principles, things can get out of hand.”
Our conversation turned to Vault B. He told me, rather cryptically, “Of course, there is something there, but not what they’re talking about.” Accounts of immense riches in the vault were “tall stories.” He said that Vault B should remain closed for now, as a precaution, because seeing immense wealth might tempt people to “deplete it,” which would be the path to “ruin.” He went on, “You have a hundred pounds in the bank. I have a hundred pounds in the bank. That man has no pounds in the bank. So he says, ‘I will just take this money off and spend it and share it.’ What did he do? Did he make it? Did he work for it? Did he sweat for it? No. It’s a polite, pressurized looting.” He added, pointedly, “It’s not yours.”
As the citizens of Trivandrum debated what to do about Vault B, the royal family and officials from the temple invited a group of astrologers to hold a four-day ceremony, known as a Devaprasnam, in order to ascertain the will of the deity. One of the astrologers, Padmanabha Sharma, said that the key to making the ceremony work was finding a child who could serve as the “instrument” through which the deity conveyed his wishes. In this case, the child was a boy who was praying at the temple when the astrologers arrived. “It all happened as a matter of destiny,” Sharma explained.
Sharma and the other astrologers made sure that the boy was clean and shirtless, and then they seated him in front of eight objects: a lamp, a mirror, a piece of cloth, some grains of rice, betel leaves, a betel nut, an ancient gold coin, and a copy of the Bhagavad Gita. A “sacred powder” was sprinkled on the ground to create an astrological chart consisting of twelve boxes: one for each of the Hindu birth stars. The boy was presented with a hundred and eight conch shells, and told to place them on the chart. As the boy arranged the shells, everyone chanted prayers. “We prayed to God to show the kid the right message,” Sharma said. Every aspect of the ceremony, he said, revealed a different message about what the deity was thinking. “It’s all science,” he said. “It’s like the doctor who diagnoses a disease from various symptoms.”
In this case, the news wasn’t good. Sharma concluded that the deity was not happy. In August, Sharma told the press, “It is advised that the wealth found in the chambers is not moved out. These are not just valuables but also divine, and displacing this will invite the wrath of the Lord.” He warned that opening the doors to Vault B would “bode ill for the people and for the land.” A member of the royal family told me that the deity had already made its displeasure known: “The biggest proof, of course, if you can call it a proof, is that Sundararajan has died.”
The Supreme Court responded to the Devaprasnam with a statement: “Secret Vault B is not being opened now . . . but we will make a decision and do not propose to hand over the decision to others. Impractical or superstitious decisions and security can’t go hand in hand.” The Court kept delaying its decision, however, and by mid-fall Vault B had still not been opened.
Around this time, I met with V. S. Achuthanandan, a former Chief Minister of Kerala and a leader of the state’s powerful Communist Party. Achuthanandan was among the few politicians who had publicly accused the royal family of mismanaging the temple. He called the astrology ritual a “silly” ploy, staged by the royal family in order to prevent the Supreme Court from taking inventory at the temple and implementing proper security measures.
Padmanabhan, the lawsuit’s initiator, felt the same way. “This business with astrologers is a farce,” he told me. I asked him if he expected treasure to be found in Vault B. He looked at me as if I had asked an exceptionally stupid question, then advised me to discuss the matter with Balagovindan, his uncle’s lawyer.
When I met with Balagovindan, he told me a story about Sundararajan. According to Balagovindan, Sundararajan and the previous maharaja, Sri Chithira Thirunal, had shared secrets about the temple—including the fact that in its treasuries were solid-gold bars. Last summer, after Vault A was opened—and no gold bars were found—Sundararajan told Balagovindan that they were probably in Vault B, as this tightly locked vault would be an excellent place to hide hefty amounts of gold.
“How many gold bars might there be?” I asked.
“We have no idea,” Balagovindan said.
Even if Vault B is empty, the treasure in Vault A could radically transform the city of Trivandrum and, indeed, the state of Kerala. If the hoard in Vault A turned out to be worth half the twenty-billion-dollar estimate, it would likely earn enough interest in one year to cover the cost of the major projects in the state’s 2012 budget, including new waste-processing plants, cargo ports, ambulances, office parks, hospital trauma units, and a modern laboratory for monitoring food and drug quality. And there would still be a three-hundred-and-fifty-million-dollar surplus, which could be used to help Kerala’s poor.
“How much ground do you want to stand?”
One morning in October, I visited a Trivandrum slum known as the Chenkal Choola Colony. On the street, old women sorted through mounds of trash, young women sold fish covered with flies, and a child in her underpants hopped on a series of boards, to avoid falling into a deep, viscous mud puddle. I met the owner of a chicken stall, a sixty-year-old man named K. S. Babu. His shop contained a cage of clucking chickens, a picture of the Virgin Mary, a tree stump for poultry butchering, and little else. Babu told me that, poor as the neighborhood was, it had been much worse before Indira Gandhi launched anti-poverty programs, in the nineteen-eighties. “If somebody died here, no one took the body away,” he told me. “And anybody without a house could take over someone’s place and live there. We couldn’t question anyone.” Government could make a big difference in people’s lives, he said.
“It is necessary that we use the treasure for the well-being of the public!” Babu went on. Despite his strong feelings, he cautioned me against broaching the topic with other residents of the Colony. “Most of them would explode, saying not to take the treasure out of the temple,” he continued. “If they are Hindus, they will show their rage. You can’t talk to them freely as you talk to me, because I think in the mind-set of a socialist.” Babu was also a Christian. In Kerala, three religions have a strong presence: a quarter of its population is Muslim, roughly another quarter is Christian, and the remainder is Hindu.
I asked Babu to introduce me to a Hindu who would consent to be interviewed.
“Talk to him,” Babu said, pointing to a slender young man walking past.
“Who is he?” I asked.
“My son.”
The young man’s name was Ganesh; he was twenty-seven, and an art student. He explained that his father had converted to Christianity, but he had remained Hindu. Ganesh firmly opposed taking any wealth out of the temple, and said that he avoided discussing the matter with his father: “As a Hindu, I see my father and mother as gods. We won’t raise our voice against them.”
Ganesh took me to the cramped apartment where the family lived. We passed through the closet-size kitchen and entered a bedroom, where we sat on a bare wooden ledge. Ganesh said that he gave the deity whatever money he could spare, which was sometimes as little as one rupee—roughly two cents. Everything in the temple, Ganesh said, came from devotees like him, and he added, “So of course it belongs to God!”
Wouldn’t it be a good thing, I asked, if the deity’s wealth were used to help people? By that logic, Ganesh said, valuable objects should also be removed from churches and mosques. Moreover, he insisted, the money would not “reach the right hands.” He explained, “There are various funds for the improvement of the Colony, which are managed by government officials, but these funds are not used properly. Even the drainage in the Colony is not properly constructed. When the tsunami came, there was a fund for the affected, but it hasn’t yet been used well, either.” Many Indians share Ganesh’s frustrations. In 2011, India’s former telecommunications minister was arrested on charges of corruption, in a scandal that may have cost Indian taxpayers as much as forty billion dollars. “If the government takes hold of the temple’s wealth, they will loot it,” Ganesh concluded.
A group of Hindu men were standing in a muddy street, chatting amiably. They were adamant that no treasure be removed from the temple. A street-food vender named Suresh spoke with me at his home, a humble concrete dwelling that he had decorated with a small statue of Buddha and pictures of his heroes: Jesus, Mother Teresa, Vishnu, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. He said that he did not trust the government to handle the temple’s wealth. I asked him if he had more faith in the royal family. “Yes,” he replied. “They were not like the government officials, who are corrupt. They were foresighted and saved this wealth for the generations to come, like parents who are saving for their children.” There are many people who, like Suresh, feel that the royal family has done an excellent job of protecting the deity’s hoard—and that the proof is the sheer quantity of treasure found in Vault A. I asked Suresh if Keralans had been better off when they were ruled by maharajas. “The administration during the king’s rule was much better,” he said.
It was surprising that, in a place with rampant poverty, there wasn’t a greater demand to nationalize the treasure. Indeed, at many intersections in Trivandrum, there are posters of Lenin, Marx, and Stalin. When I met with Achuthanandan, the Communist Party leader, he claimed that much of the wealth donated by the maharaja to the temple in 1750 was actually tax revenue that he had collected from other rulers; it was, in essence, the people’s money. This argument was proving a hard sell in Kerala. Several Communist activists told me that, if they kept pressing for the temple treasure to be distributed to the public, they risked alienating their Hindu constituents. “We must have unity,” one activist told me. I asked him what he thought Marx and Lenin would have done. The activist, shifting in his chair, replied, “When they are reincarnated, we must ask them.”
The discovery of treasure at the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple has sparked treasure hunts across India. In November, the Indian press reported that the Chandrasekhara Swamy temple, near Chennai, also had a secret vault that might hold enormous riches. In the state of Tamil Nadu, researchers are campaigning to open the vaults of two ancient temples. One of the researchers, Kudavayil Balasubramaniyam, told me, “Maybe the treasure is as big as the one at the Padmanabhaswamy temple.”
The Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple is now protected by metal detectors, security cameras, and more than two hundred guards, some of whom are equipped with machine guns. Even so, the site lacks an important security feature that it once had: obscurity. Long lines now form outside the temple each day, and devotees and pilgrims must pass through security checkpoints. According to Sanal Kumar, the former head of security, many devotees blame Sundararajan and his allies for these inconveniences. Padmanabhan, for his part, laments, “No one thinks that I had any interest in protecting the treasure.”
One evening this winter, I visited Padmanabhan at his home, where he has lived since birth with his parents and, until recently, his uncle. He showed me his uncle’s room. There was a desk with a few letters on it, shelves crammed with law books, and a wooden bed frame. Sundararajan, ever abstemious, had refused the comfort of a mattress. The room had not been touched since he died. “I don’t want to change anything,” Padmanabhan said. “A great person has used this room. Why not preserve it?”
Our conversation was interrupted by the arrival of Padmanabhan’s seventy-five-year-old father, T. P. Krishnan, who was Sundararajan’s older brother. Krishnan had come from the temple; he was bare-chested and wearing a dhoti, and he was in such poor health that he could barely walk on his own. I had a cup of tea with Padmanabhan and his father; afterward, Padmanabhan told me that his father was devastated by Sundararajan’s death. “Now my father is half dead,” Padmanabhan said. “He wasn’t like this before.”
Padmanabhan believes that the stress of the case, and the public’s vitriol, contributed to his uncle’s sudden death. “Death is inevitable,” he told me. “But when I lost him it was beyond words.” There were tears in his eyes. He said, “At times, I even feel totally despicable.”
“Why?” I said.
“Because I am the person who put this temple on the map and started all this,” he replied.
Padmanabhan plans to return to New Delhi this summer to appear before the Supreme Court, where he hopes to resolve the matter of the temple’s management and force a decision about Vault B. In the meantime, he says, there is nothing to do but wait.
After visiting Padmanabhan, I lingered on his doorstep, staring at the temple and watching pilgrims—many of them bare-chested and barefoot—walking down the street toward the magnificent stone tower. I, too, felt drawn to the place, but even today the temple is open only to adherents of Hinduism. Almost as a consolation, I returned again to the home of the old historian, Nair. I liked chatting with him about the temple’s history, and I was curious to see if he had found his grandfather’s box. After serving me tea, he took me to a small room at the back of the house, where he pointed at the bottom of a mountain of dusty objects. There was the box.
“There could be a treasure in there,” he told me. “Yes, a small treasure—perhaps gold, but not diamonds. My mother told me that my grandfather used to purchase gold coins of George V of England.” I asked Nair if he had reconsidered opening it. The old historian stared at the pile of objects, transfixed. He said, “No. Let it be.” ♦
Published in the print edition of the April 30, 2012, issue.
Jake Halpern received a Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for “Welcome to the New World,” a twenty-part series in the Times. He is adapting the series into a book.
Challa Kondaiah
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Challa Kondaiah
In office
1979–1980
Preceded by Avula Sambasiva Rao
Succeeded by Alladi Kuppu Swami
Personal details
Born 4 July 1918
Died 2001
Challa Kondaiah (Telugu: చల్లా కొండయ్య) is Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh High Court.
He was born on 4 July 1918 at Challavaripalle in Anantapur district to Challa Venkata Kondaiah and Laxmamma. He graduated from Government Arts College in Anantapur and received his Bachelor of Law from Madras Law College. He did Civil, Criminal and Taxation work in Madras High Court, High Court of Andhra at Guntur and High Court of Andhra Pradesh, Hyderabad. He was appointed as Standing Counsel for Income-Tax Department in 1958. He was appointed as permanent Judge on 21 August 1967. He was transferred to Madhya Pradesh High Court on 24 June 1976. He was Judge of Andhra Pradesh High Court again from 27 October 1977. He was Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh from 16 March 1979 till 3 July 1980.
Government of Andhra Pradesh appointed Justice Challa Kondaiah Commission in 1987. Based on its recommendations, the government has made an Endowment Act to end the Hereditary rights of Archakas in the Temples of Andhra Pradesh.
He was chairman of Tirumala Tirupati Devasthanams and initiated the Nitya Annadana Scheme, a food service to the devotees.
A spacious auditorium for Anantapur Bar Association for their cultural, social and recreational activities with a seating capacity of 1,000 was constructed in 2005. It was named as Justice Challa Kondaiah Auditorium. A Statue of Challa Kondaiah was also installed in the premises.
Charu Chandra Biswas
Born 21 April 1888
Calcutta, British India
Died 12 December 1960 (aged 72)
Nationality Indian
Political party Indian National Congress
Spouse(s) Suhasini Biswas
Children 6 daughters
Details
Charu Chandra Biswas (CIE) was a prominent Indian jurist and politician known for his roles in the judiciary and the Union Cabinet of India.
🏛️ Key Biographical Details
Born: 21 April 1888, Calcutta, British India.
Died: 12 December 1960 (aged 72).
Political Party: Indian National Congress.
Spouse: Suhasini Biswas.
Children: 6 daughters.
Father: Ashutosh Biswas.
⚖️ Legal and Judicial Career
Lawyer: He began his career as a lawyer in the Calcutta High Court.
Judge: He was appointed a Judge of the Calcutta High Court in February 1940.
Vice Chancellor: He served as the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Calcutta from 1949–1950.
Honour: The imperial British government appointed him a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire (CIE) in the 1931 Birthday Honours list.
Political Career
Member of Parliament (MP): He was elected to the Rajya Sabha (Upper House of the Indian Parliament) representing West Bengal from 1952 to 1960.
- Cabinet Minister: He served as the Union Minister of Law and Minority Affairs in Jawaharlal Nehru's cabinet from 1952 to 1957, succeeding B. R.
Ambedkar. - Leader of the House: He was the Leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha from February 1953 to November 1954.
Biswas began his career as a Lawyer in the Calcutta High Court. The imperial British government appointed him a Companion of the Order of the Indian Empire {CIE) in the 1931 Birthday Honours list. In February 1940, he was appointed a judge of the Calcutta High Court. and subsequently as Vice Chancellor of the University of Calcutta in 1949–50.
Biswas was elected to the Upper House of Indian Parliament the Rajya Sabha from 1952 to 1960 from West Bengal. He was the leader of the House in the Rajya Sabha from 1953 to 1954. He was also a Minister of State and then Union Minister of Law and Minority Affairs, the latter from 1952 to 1957.
C. S. Karnan
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
C. S. Karnan
Judge, Calcutta High Court
In office
11 March 2016 – 12 June 2017
Judge, Madras High Court
In office
30 March 2009 – 11 March 2016
Personal details
Born
12 June 1955
Karunanithi Swaminathan
Karnatham, Vriddachalam,
Cuddalore, Madras, India
Nationality Indian
Spouse(s) Saraswati
Children 2
Justice Chinnaswamy Swaminathan Karnan (born 12 June 1955) is a retired Indian judge. In May 2017, he was sentenced to six months of imprisonment by the Supreme Court of India, holding him guilty of contempt of court. He was the first Indian High Court judge to be sent to prison for contempt while in office.
Early life
Karnan was born on 12 June 1955 as Karunanithi Swaminathan in the village of Karnatham, in the Cuddalore district of erstwhile Madras (now Tamil Nadu), into a dalit family. He was the second of eight children born to Chinnaswamy Swaminathan, a school teacher and headmaster, and a recipient of President's Best Teacher Award, and Kamalam, a homemaker. He completed schooling in Karnatham's Adi Dravidar school and a government school in Mangalampet, before completing his pre-university course from Government Arts College, Vridhachalam. Thereafter, he graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in botany from The New College, Chennai, and subsequently obtained a Bachelor of Laws degree from Madras Law College in 1983. He changed his first name from Karunanithi to Karnan in 1991, on the insistence of his wife Saraswati due to numerological reasons.
Career
Upon graduating with a law degree in 1983, Karnan enrolled as advocate before the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and began to practice civil law. During the time, he was selected as legal adviser to the Chennai MetroWater Supply and Sewage Board, the government advocate in civil suits and also as a standing counsel for the union government.
In 2009, Justice Asok Kumar Ganguly, then the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, recommended Karnan's name to the collegium for appointment as a judge. Despite his work not having known well to the collegium, his appointment was approved by the collegium headed by then Chief Justice of India K. G. Balakrishnan. Speaking about it to The Hindu, Ganguly justified the appointment because "he [Karnan] represented a certain community that should be represented in the choice of judges", but he, along with other members of the collegium, expressed regret over it later.
Controversies
In November 2011, Karnan wrote to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes (NCSC) alleging caste-based harassment from other judges of the Madras High Court. Addressing a press conference organized in his chamber, he said that he had faced such "humiliation and embarrassment since April 2009" and that it still continued. He spoke of a specific incident when a judge "touched him with his foot". This led to an agitation in the campus of the Court. The then NCSC Chairman, P. L. Punia, had forwarded Karnan's letter to the then Chief Justice of India, Justice S. H. Kapadia.
In a controversial judgement in June 2013, he ruled that the promise of marriage for premarital sex would be considered as marriage. He wrote, "If a bachelor aged 21 years or above and a spinster aged 18 years or above had pre-marital sex with intention to marry and subsequent to this the man deserts the woman the victim woman can approach a civil forum for remedy after producing necessary substantial evidence to grant her social status as wife. This remedy is not only for the purpose of giving relief to the victim woman but also to maintain the cultural integrity of India." When met with criticism, he clarified that the "order does not in any way run against any religion and is not intended to wound any Indian. The order had not in any way degraded the system of marriage performed as per the various religious and customs and rites among the various communities".
In another controversial incident, in January 2014, Karnan barged into a court room at the Madras High Court during a hearing of a public interest litigation (PIL) before a Division bench of on a matter relating to the appointment of certain judges. He told the bench in open court that the selection was unfair and that he wanted to file an affidavit in his name. The behavior was condemned by the Supreme Court saying, "The sudden unfamiliar incident made us fume inwardly at this raw unconventional protest that was unexpected, uncharitable and ungenerous and, to say the least, indecorous." During the time, the then Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, Rajesh Kumar Agrawal, wrote to the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, P. Sathasivam, asking him to transfer Karnan to any other High Court. However, Karnan wrote to Sathasivam and Agrawal, stating that he wished to stay on in the Madras High Court, in order to prove the allegations that he had raised against the Chief Justice and the other judges of the Court. Subsequently, Karnan wrote to the joint registrar of the Right to Information section, alleging irregularities in the appointment of district judges. He sought details of the selection process in order to file a complaint before the President of India. In the intervening period, 20 judges of the Madras High Court jointly wrote to the Chief Justice of India requesting Justice Karnan's transfer.
In August 2014, when Justice Kaul was appointed as Madras HC chief justice, Justice Karnan launched into a one-man attack against many of the judges. He supposedly hurled accusations at the judges, who fell silent. It is believed that the issue was again based on discrimination. 20 judges sent a memorandum to the CJI asking that Justice Karnan be transferred since they found it difficult to work with him.
In 2015, Justice Karnan publicly alleged that another judge had sexually harassed an intern in his chamber — an allegation that he has since been unable to substantiate.
In late 2015, he wrote a letter to Justice Kaul saying he was going on a long leave because of the ‘dummy cases’ he was being allotted. In February 2016, the apex court transferred him to Calcutta HC.
On 23 January 2017, Justice Karnan had published an open letter to the prime minister naming "an initial list" of 20 sitting and retired Supreme Court and High Court judges, accusing them of corruption.
On 8 May 2017, Karnan had sentenced Chief Justice of India Jagdish Singh Khehar and seven other SC judges to five-year rigorous imprisonment after holding them guilty under the SC/ST Atrocities Act-1989 and amended Act of 2015.
The Supreme Court on 9 May 2017 sentenced Calcutta High Court judge Justice C. S. Karnan to six months imprisonment for contempt of court. To avoid the contempt proceeding, it was believed while he had fled to Nepal, he was very much present in Kolkata. He finally retired on 12 June and subsequently after a week of his retirement, finally arrested by the Kolkata Police on 21 June 2017 from Coimbatore. He was eventually released from prison on 20 December 2017 after completing his six-month sentence.
MR. D.M. Rege
LL.B. 1974-1985
Justice Devidatta Mangesh Rege, LL.B., : Born on 18th March, 1923. Educated at Cambay High School, Eliphinstone College, Bombay and Government Law College, Bombay. Enrolled as an Advocate on 19th July, 1945 in the High Court at Bombay. Practised on the Criminal and Civil Side of the Bombay High Court. Appointed Judge of the City Civil and Sessions Court, Greater Bombay, on 8th March, 1965. Additional Principal Judge, City Civil Court, and Additional Sessions Judge, Greater Bombay, on 14th November, 1969 and Principal Judge Bombay City Civil Court and Sessions Judge Greater Bombay on 15th April, 1970. Appointed Additional Judge of the High Court at Bombay with effect from 14th December, 1972. Appointed Permanent Judge on 7-8-1974. Retired on 18-3-1985.
Doraiswamy Raju
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Doraiswamy Raju or D. Raju (born 2 July 1939) was an Indian Judge and former Justice of The Supreme Court of India.
Career
Raju was graduated in 1959 and obtained B.L. degree in Law in 1961 from the Madras University. In 1962 he was enrolled as an advocate in Madras Bar Association and started practice in various High Courts of India on Civil, Constitutional, Taxation and Land related matters. Raju worked as Standing Counsel for various Public Institutions and Undertakings of Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh Government including Food Corporation of India. He was designated as Senior Advocate of Madras High Court in 1987. He was appointed as the Judge of the same High Court in 1990. On 17 November 1995 Justice Raju became the Chairman, Advisory Board of COFEPOSA. He was elevated in the post of Chief Justice, Himachal Pradesh High Court on 1 July 1998 and in 2000 he was appointed as Justice of the Supreme Court of India. Raju was retired from judgeship on 1 July 2004
Dhirendra Hiralal Waghela
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hon'ble Justice
Dhirendra Hiralal Waghela
Chief Justice of Bombay High Court
In office
15 February 2016 – 10 August 2016
Chief Justice of Odisha High Court
In office
13 April 2015 – 14 February 2016
Preceded by Amitava Roy
Succeeded by Pradip Kumar Mohanty (acting)
Chief Justice of Karnataka High Court
In office
March 2013 – 12 April 2015
Preceded by K Shridhar Rao
Succeeded by Subhro Kamal Mukherjee (A)
Personal details
Born
Dhirendra Hiralal Waghela
11 August 1954
Citizenship Indian
Nationality 
India
IndiaDhirendra Hiralal Waghela (born 11 August 1954) was the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court and former Chief Justice of the Odisha High Court and Karnataka High Court.
Education and Legal practice
Justice Waghela stood first from Saurashtra University in General LL.B. as well as in Special LL.B. in 1974 and 1975, respectively. He took his master's degree in law in 1976–77. Waghela started his own practice in 1978. He practised in the Labour and Industrial courts. In 1999, he was called to the bench and assumed his office as Additional Judge of the High Court of Gujarat on 17 September 1999.
Davinder Singh Rahal
Davinder Singh Rahal
Davinder Singh Rahal, of Auckland, received the Queen's Service Medal, for services to the Indian community. Mr Rahal is a founding member of the Auckland Sikh Society and has worked to support the Sikh community in Auckland. He has played a key role in establishing the Gurudwara in Bombay and the Sikh Temple in Papatoetoe. He has also supported the Ambedkar Sports and Cultural Club. Mr Rahal is the Chairperson of the New Zealand Helping Hand Society, an organisation focused on improving the welfare of the local community.
G. Sasidharan, Justice
Mr.Justice G.Sasidharan was born on 17-9-1942 and obtained his Law degree in 1966 from Law College, Trivandrum and commenced his practice in Thiruvananthapuram. He opted to become a Munsiff and later on promoted as Sub-Judge and District Judge. He functioned as the Special Commissioner for Sabarimala. He also worked as Law Secretary to the Government of Kerala.
Govind Mathur
From Wikipedia
Hon'ble Chief Justice (Retd.)
Govind Mathur
In office
14 November 2018 – 13 April 2021
Nominated by Ranjan Gogoi
Appointed by Ram Nath Kovind
In office
21 November 2017 – 13 November 2018
Nominated by Dipak Misra
Appointed by Ram Nath Kovind
In office
2 September 2004 – 20 November 2017
Nominated by Ramesh Chandra Lahoti
Appointed by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Personal details
Born 14 April 1959
Govind Mathur (born 14 April 1959) is an Indian Judge. He is Former Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court and Former Judge of Allahabad High Court and Rajasthan High Court.
Career
Hon'ble Mr. Justice Govind Mathur was appointed as additional judge of Rajasthan High Court on 2nd Sept 2004. He was promoted to permanent judge on 29 May 2006. He was transferred to Allahabad High Court on 21 November 2017.
On 24 October 2018, being the senior most Justice of court, he was appointed as acting Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court. On 10 November 2018, he was appointed as Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court.
On 14 November 2018, he took oath as Chief Justice of Allahabad High Court.[citation needed] He was Retired on 13 April 2021.
G. Sivarajan, Justice
Born on 23-09-1942.
Enrolled as an Advocate on 20-06-1976.
Practiced in the High Court of Kerala and Subordinate Court at Ernakulam.
Mainly practiced in taxation.
Worked as Senior Government Pleader in the High Court from July 1987 to September 1988 and also worked as Counsel in the High Court Panel and in the Motor Accidents Claims Tribunal, Ernakulam for United India Insurance Company.
Appointed as permanent Judge of the Kerala High Court with effect from
17-01-1996.
Due to retire on 23-09-2004.
Contact Address:
House No. 39/3300A,
"Rajas",
K. S. N. Menon Road,
Kochi - 682 016.
Phone:
Direct : -
Ext. : 305
Residence : 2357777 & 2357800 (Pvt.)
Harsha N. Devani
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Harsha N. Devani (born 27 March 1958) is an Indian Judge. She is former Judge of Gujarat High Court.
Hon'ble Ms. Justice Retd.
Harsha N. Devani
In office
8 October 2004 – 26 March 2020
Nominated by Ramesh Chandra Lahoti
Appointed by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Personal details
Born 27 March 1958
Kunkavav, Amreli District, Gujarat
Life
Harsha N. Devani was born on 27 March 1958 in Kunkavav, Amreli district, Gujarat. She completed her secondary school education from Prakash Higher Secondary School, Ahmedabad; Convent Little Flower School, Dibrugarh, Assam; and Loreto Convent, Ranchi. She completed B. Sc. in Microbiology from M.G. Science Institute, Ahmedabad; M. Sc. in Microbiology from School of Science, Gujarat University; and LL.B. from Sir L.A. Shah Law College, Ahmedabad.
She started her career as a lawyer on 10 July 1992. She was appointed as the Additional Judge of Gujarat High Court on 8 October 2004 and later as the Permanent Judge on 9 August 2007.
She was one of two judges who heard appeals in the 2002 Naroda Patiya massacre case.
She was retired on 26 March 2020.
Hosbet Suresh
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hosbet Suresh
Born 20 July 1929
Hosabettu, Surathkal, Karnataka
Died 11 June 2020 (aged 90)
Nationality Indian
Occupation Lawyer
Known for High court judge in Bombay
Hosbet Suresh (20 July 1929 – 11 June 2020) was a judge of the Bombay High Court who led a number of commissions that investigated violations of human rights.
Formal career
Suresh was born in Hosabettu, Surathkal, Karnataka on 20 July 1929. He attended Mangalore University for his B.A. and then the Visvesvaraya Technological University in Belgaum for his M.A. He went on to Bombay University to obtain his LL.M.[1] On 30 November 1953, he enrolled as an Advocate of the Bombay High Court, practicing on both the appellate and the original sides of the court.
Between 1960-65 he was a part-time professor of Law at the Government Law College, Bombay. From 1965-68 he was a part-time professor of Law at K.C. Law College, Bombay. From 1967-68, Suresh was Assistant Government Pleader in the Bombay City Civil & Sessions Court. On 29 November 1968, he was appointed a judge of the Bombay City Court and Additional Sessions Judge, Greater Bombay. In October 1979, he was promoted to Second Additional Principal Judge of the Bombay City Civil & Sessions Court.
On 23 June 1980, he resigned from this position and began to practice as an advocate at the Bombay High Court. In 1982 he was designated Senior Advocate of the High Court. Returning to the judiciary, on 21 November 1986 Suresh took office as Additional Judge of the Bombay High Court, and on 12 June 1987 was appointed permanent Judge of the Bombay High Court. He retired from the High Court on 19 July 1991.
Post-retirement
Suresh and Justice Tiwatia were appointing in December 1991 to investigate the Kaveri Riots in Bangalore.[1] Suresh and Siraj Mehfuz Daud were appointed by the Indian People's Human Rights Commission to investigate the Bombay riots that had taken place in December 1992 and January 1993, publishing their findings in a 1993 report titled The People's Verdict. The report indicts the police, the government and political leaders. In August 1995 Suresh issued a report titled "Forced Evictions - An Indian People's Tribunal Enquiry into the Brutal Demolitions of Pavement and Slum Dwellers' Homes". The report documented the use of brutal and indiscriminate force against slum dwellers in Mumbai.
Suresh participated with retired justices Rajinder Sachar and Siraj Mehfuz Daud in an investigation by the Indian People's Human Rights Tribunal into a massive slum clearance drive in Mumbai, with the ostensible purpose of preserving the Sanjay Gandhi National Park.[citation needed] The demolitions on 22–23 January had been undertaken despite a notification from the state government to stay demolitions until September. The people had not been allowed to take the remains of their homes, which had been burnt. In August 2000 the judges, joined by former Supreme Court judge V. R. Krishna Iyer, held a two-day hearing into the clearances in which about 60,000 people had been evicted. The inquiry covered both legal aspects of the clearances and the human impact.
2002 Gujarat Riots
Suresh and P.B. Sawant were members of an Indian People's Tribunal (IPT) fact-finding team headed by former Supreme Court of India judge V. R. Krishna Iyer that went to Gujarat in March and April 2002 following the communal riots triggered by the Godhra train attack. The tribunal gathered 2,094 oral and written testimonies and met with many senior police officers and government officials. Findings were documented in their report "Crime Against Humanity". In February 2012 Suresh said that on that visit the former state home minister Haren Pandya had told him and Sawant that Chief Minister Narendra Modi had told the police not to restrain the rioting Hindus. Pandya was murdered in March 2003. When he provided the information, which was recorded on audio tape, Pandya had asked the two judges not to reveal his name. In reaction to the mass killings in Gujarat, Suresh was one of the drafters of a proposed law "The Prevention of Genocide and Crimes against Humanity Act 2004". This would make Ministers and officials criminally responsible if they failed to exercise control in cases of mass violence against a group of citizens.
Public Food distribution system in Mumbai
Suresh headed an Indian People's Tribunal that inquired into the public food distribution system in Mumbai, releasing a report on the subject in March 2010. The HRLN and ANHAD conducted a Tribunal in Srinagar on 20–21 February 2010 that investigated human rights violations in the Kashmir Valley. Suresh headed the jury. A comprehensive report of the findings was released in New Delhi on 8 September 2010. The report documented excessive militarization, with one soldier for every twenty people. It found that the soldiers commit acts of violence against innocent people with impunity. Draconian laws are in place. The Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958, lets officers do whatever they feel is warranted with full protection against legal prosecution.
Views
Speaking in 2008 after recent attacks on Mumbai residents Hosbet Suresh said: "Groups like this resort to violence at the drop of a hat these days. Such people are encouraged for electoral gains by those in powerful positions ... so they know nothing will happen to them". In November 2008 a scandal arose when thirty-three judges were alleged to be involved in embezzling court funds. Suresh commented: "It is unfortunate we have no law to remove a sitting judge if he is found incompetent or facing corruption charges. The media should freely report on corruption in the judiciary". In December 2009, in the context of a further scandal involving Justice P. D. Dinakaran, Suresh published a lengthy article in Outlook magazine calling for procedures to keep errant judges off the bench. He concluded that "...judicial integrity is not just a private virtue, but a public necessity. The situation demands action—not inaction".
Harish Salve
Senior AdvocateSolicitor General of India
From Wikipedia
Harish Salve
In office
1 November 1999 – 3 November 2002
Preceded by N. Santosh Hegde
Succeeded by Kirit Raval
Personal details
Born 22 June 1955
Warud, Sindkheda, Dhule, Maharashtra, India
Nationality Indian
Spouse(s)
Meenakshi Salve
(m. 1982; div. 2020)
Caroline Brossard
(m. 2020)
Children 2
Residence New Delhi, India
Profession Senior Advocate
Awards Padma Bhushan
Harish Salve QC is an Indian senior advocate who practices at the Supreme Court of India. He served as the Solicitor General of India from 1 November 1999 to 3 November 2002. He also fought the case of Kulbhushan Jadhav at the International Court of Justice (ICJ). On 16 January 2020 he was appointed as a Queen's Counsel for the courts of England and Wales.
Background and family
Harish Salve was born into a Marathi family. His father, N. K. P. Salve, was a chartered accountant and prominent politician of the Indian National Congress. His mother, Ambriti Salve, was a doctor. His grandfather, P.K. Salve, was a successful criminal lawyer and his great-grandfather (father of P.K. Salve) was a munsif (subordinate judge). Salve who is a Christian, grew in a multi-religious family with a liberal secularism at his home.
Personal life
Harish Salve was married to Meenakshi Salve for 38 years; they got divorced in 2020. He lives and works in North London. Salve married Caroline Brossard, a London-based artist, on October 28, 2020. Harish Salve had first met Brossard at an art event.
Early Schooling and formative years
He did his schooling at St. Francis De'Sales High School, Nagpur, Maharashtra.[5] He completed his Chartered Accountancy from ICAI and LLB from Nagpur University. The former chief Justice of India Sharad Arvind Bobde was his classmate in school. Before he became a lawyer, Salve practised Chartered Accountancy in taxation. He began his legal career as an intern in 1980 at JB Dadachandji & Co.
Career
He began his legal career in 1980 at J. B. Dadachandji & Co., first as an intern, and later as a full-time lawyer. During this time, he assisted Palkhivala in the Minerva Mills case (case citation: AIR 1980 SC 1789). Salve was later designated a Senior Counsel by the Delhi High Court.
Salve worked with former Attorney General, Soli Sorabjee, from 1980–1986. He declined to be nominated for a second three-year term due to "personal reasons" when his first term ended in November 2002. He later clarified that his wife was unhappy with him bringing work home.
Salve was appointed as Amicus Curiae by the Supreme Court in some cases, mostly relating to preservation of the environment. However, in 2011, he recused himself from this position during a hearing on illegal mining, on the grounds that he had previously appeared for one or more of the parties.
In 2013, Salve was admitted to the English Bar and subsequently joined the Blackstone Chambers.
Major cases and clients
Harish Salve argued the first Anti-Dumping case in the Supreme Court of India. He frequently represents large corporations like Mukesh Ambani's Reliance Industries Limited. He has appeared in the Krishna Godavari Basin gas dispute case against the latter's brother, Anil Ambani's Reliance Natural Resources Limited.
Other clients include the Tata Group, ITC Limited, whom he has represented on various matters. He has appeared for several Tata group companies. He has also appeared for Ratan Tata himself.
Salve represented Vodafone in its $2.5 billion tax dispute with the Indian government. He initially lost the case in the Bombay High Court, but later won it at the Supreme Court after taking a temporary residence in London and relocating his office there to focus solely on the case. Salve was extremely critical of the Indian government for passing a retrospective clarification to the Income Tax law in the 2012 Union Budget, which nullified the Supreme Court's decision.
Salve appeared for Bilkis Bano, a victim of the Gujarat Riots, at the behest of the National Human Rights Commission in 2003. He also appeared as a defence counsel in the Aarushi-Hemraj double murder case.
In 2015, he took up the high-profile case of actor Salman Khan. The actor was earlier sentenced to five years in jail for a 2002 hit-and-run accident that left one man dead and four others injured.Senior counsel Amit Desai, a Mumbai-based lawyer replaced Salve for a short time in the Salman Khan trial. The Bombay High Court eventually suspended the sessions court decision and on 10 December 2015 acquitted Salman Khan of all charges for the 2002 hit-and-run and drunk-and-drive case.
In May 2017, he represented India before the International Court of Justice in the Kulbhushan Jadhav case. Jadhav was sentenced to death by a Pakistani military court on charges of spying. Due to his efforts, the International Court of Justice has ordered a provisional stay on Jadhav's execution until a final verdict is declared. For this case he charged only ₹1(INR) in legal fees. India Today magazine ranked him 43rd in India's 50 Most powerful people of 2017 list.
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K.K.Narendran, Justice
Narendran stood for social justice
KOCHI: Justice K K Narendran had a great role in ensuring social justice to backward class in the Kerala society. The Justice Narendran Commission which looked into the possibility of en
Published: 09th July 2011 08
Justice K K narendran’s wife and children near his body when it was brought to his residence on Friday night| Express
KOCHI: Justice K K Narendran had a great role in ensuring social justice to backward class in the Kerala society.
The Justice Narendran Commission which looked into the possibility of ensuring social justice and possibility of reservation in educational institutions and government services has been widely discussed. The commission’s efforts were synonymous with the word ‘creamy layer’ in the society once.
Findings in various reports submitted by the Commission often hit headlines owing to the controversial issues which he was deputed to inquire about. Organisations like the NSS strongly opposed the recommendations in his report which stated backward class was not getting enough participation in the social system.
The Commission observed that as long as the present condition prevails, some of the sixty eight communities are likely to continue with poor representation while others will have adequate representation,” the Commission noted.
While SNDP, Muslim League, CPM, Congress and Indian National League welcomed this initiative and had asked the government to implement the report. But the NSS and others representing forward castes protested.
In 2007, he was deputed as the commission to inquire the Rajakumari land deal in which former minister T U Kuruvila and family members were allegedly involved.
The Commission’s finding was that there was no evidence of the involvement of Kuruvila’s family in the deal.
Kiruba Munusamy
Kiruba is the first Dalit woman lawyer from Tamil Nadu to practice law in the Supreme Court. She has started a training centre for human rights litigation where lawyers, including women from disadvantaged communities, can be trained with professional skills and provided with a co-working space to act independently. She grew up facing caste discrimination first hand; once in the queue for drawing water from the public tank she moved a pail of water and a higher caste girl poured it all out and cleaned it only because Kiruba had touched it.
(Image Courtesy: Hague Talks)
She finds inspiration from Babasaheb Ambedkar’s quote, “Cultivation of mind should be the ultimate aim of human existence.” Through her activism she works for the annihilation of caste and supports Dalit women empowerment, indigenous rights, LGBTQI rights, minorities, advancement of disadvantaged groups, and freedom of expression. Apart from the legal framework, she organizes and conducts awareness campaigns, workshops to bring awareness and educate the downtrodden, sexual minorities (LGBTQI) and Dalit women about their fundamental human rights and legal remedies on violation.
K.T. Telang, Justice
M.A., LL.B.,C.I.E. 1889-1893
Mr. Justice Kashinath Trimbak Telang, M.A. LL.B. : Was unquestionably the most versatile and brilliant of the Judges of the Bombay High Court. His whole career was remarked by exceptional precocity. Born in 1850, he died in 1892. Within this short span of a little over 40 years, his life was packed with varied and brilliant achievements in diverse fields. He practiced as an advocate on the Original Side of the High Court. Mr. Inverarity who cam in close contact with him, regarded him as head and shoulders above all his Indian contemporaries at the Bar, both as lawyer and as a public speaker. His courtesy, modesty, candour and good humour, his fluent and graceful English attracted his European colleagues. At the Bar, he was distinguished for his knowledge of Hindu Law, where his Sanskrit learning gave him a special advantage. It is noteworthy that both at the Bar, and later in his judgments from the Bench, he brought his knowledge of Sanskrit and his legal learning to bear upon the liberalisation and modernisation of Hindu law to make it elastic and progressive. On the death of Mr. Justice Nanabhai Haridas in 1889, Mr. Telang was appointed Judge of the High Court at the remarkable age of 38. Mr. Telang was also an educationist and a staunch champion of English and liberal education. He was appointed as the Vice-Chancellor at the age of 36 and was the first and youngest Indian Vice-Chancellor of Bombay University. His untimely death caused universal regret.
K Ramaswamy, Hon’ble Mr. Justice
Executive Chairman
Ex : Judge, Supreme Court of India
Mr. Justice K. Rmaswamy, Born on 13.7.1932, Graduated from W.G.B. College, Bhimavaram,West Godavari Distt. Took Law Degree from Andhra University Law College. Enrolled as an Advocate on 9.7.1962. Practised in Civil & Criminal cases. Worked as Additional Public Prosecutor December, 1972 to October, 1974. Worked as Govt. Pleader on October, 1974 in the High Court of Andhra Pradesh. Appointed Sr. Standing Counsel for Andhra Pradesh State Electricity Board during 1981-82. Appointed as Addl. Judge of Andhra Pradesh High Court on 29.9.1982 and as permanent Judge of the same High Court on 26.11.1982. Vice-President, International Jurists Organisation (ASIA) from September, 1989.
Elevated to the Bench of Supreme Court of India on 6.10.1989.
Retired on 12.7.1997.
Mr. Justice K. Ramaswamy, H. No.1043, "SHYAMALA SADAN", Domalguda, Advocate colony, Street No.14, Hyderabad-550 029. Phone 040-27631235.
K Hema, Justice
Almost all women in films have faced the ‘compromise’ question: Justice K Hema
By -TNN,
The Justice Hema Commission that was appointed by the Kerala government to study the issues faced by women in Malayalam film industry submitted its report to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan on December 31, 2019. The commission was constituted in July 2017, after Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) submitted a memorandum to the CM regarding the issues faced by women in Mollywood. The three-member committee was headed by retired Justice K Hema. The other members were senior actor Sharada and former bureaucrat K B Valsala Kumari.
Talking to Kochi Times, Justice Hema divulges that if she had more time, the findings would have been manifold. “I only took two years to do such an elaborate study. I somehow wound it up,” she explains.
During the investigation, Justice Hema explains that she has not only spoken to the actors but also recorded their statements. “To keep it anonymous, I did not take their names or any details, I kept everything confidential, collected evidences from them and documented it,” she explains, as she reveals the key findings in her own words.
On Casting Couch
Casting couch exists in Malayalam cinema. For getting a chance in cinema, girls/women are asked to ‘compromise’, ‘adjust’. Everybody in the film industry knows the meaning of these words. Demands are made for sexual favours including sharing bed for casting them or to get any other job in cinema.
To make a distinction between casting couch and sexual harassment in cinema is very important because there’s a difference. Everybody says sexual harassment in workplace is there everywhere, but you need to understand that casting couch exists only in the film industry. Making a demand in return for a role or job and denying the person the opportunity if they resist exists only in cinema. This applies not just for actors but also hair stylists, junior artistes and others. A teacher or a clerk is not asked for sexual favours to get a job. They need only prove their ability by undergoing test and interview.
On the culture of enforcing bans
If you are not willing, you will not get a chance. If somehow, they manage to get a film and then they express resentment against ‘compromises’, the torture begins. This includes making them stand in the sun on a particular scene and umbrellas are not allowed to be used, making them do retakes several times.
There is a renowned actress who has not received a call for a film for four years, despite proving her talent because she resisted to the atrocities. I have reported everything, but since it is in camera, it will be confidential. There are many such experiences which are heart-breaking. Almost all women in the film industry have faced the question of ‘compromise’.
Men too have been facing such issues. Even the A-listers have unofficial bans in the industry and the reasons can often be trivial. There are a lot of prejudices.
The issues become grave when it happens to very young girls. They do not have anyone to share their worries with. There is none in the industry to approach to redress the grievance. They come into films after facing many objections from the family. So, when they suffer, they can’t go back and tell their parents. A witness wept while giving statement, sharing her helplessness.
On other human rights and constitutional violation
Beyond casting couch and ban, there are several human right and constitutional violations in cinema. There are no toilets and changing rooms in several locations. There are no wash rooms on locations. Some don’t even get proper food and water at the sets, especially junior artistes.
A common question that artistes are asked by the society, including well-educated people, is why are they so keen on this job despite all these difficulties? Even people in films ask, if they have any difficulty to adjust, then why get into films? The women in cinema say that like any other woman, they have the right to choose any career.
On the next steps by the government
As per report, there's only one solution- enact a statute and constitute a tribunal. Tribunal will have power to impose fine and compensation on the wrong doers. It can also bar any person working in industry, as a punishment. Those who ban a woman from cinema can be barred from working in cinema now.
The government has decided to enact laws based on the findings. Minister for Cinema and Culture A K Balan has already said that he will be seriously considering the findings of the report and frame a comprehensive law for the film industry.
Both men and women from the film world came to me and were cooperative. But what I understood was that some were not able to open up about everything they wanted. They were scared that they would lose opportunities. Even a few Women in Cinema Collective (WCC) members were scared to speak up.
It was my daughter Niharika who urged me to accept the assignment. Now, I know this is an opportunity to do substantial justice and make a contribution to the film industry. Film is not a world that we imagine. When we say casting couch, we may think about sharing a bed, but it isn’t that, it is beyond imagination. In the report, I have only written about a few episodes that I found convincing. There were several other severe instances. What is happening is a grave sin.
K. G. Balakrishnan, Justice
Konakuppakatil Gopinathan Balakrishnan
Justice K. G. Balakrishnan, during an official visit to Brasília in 2008
In office
14 January 2007 – 12 May 2010
Appointed by A. P. J. Abdul Kalam
Preceded by Y. K. Sabharwal
Succeeded by Sarosh Homi Kapadia
Personal details
Born 12 May 1945
Spouse(s) Nirmala Balakrishnan
Konakuppakatil Gopinathan Balakrishnan (K. G. Balakrishnan) (Malayalam: കൊനകുപ്പക്കാട്ടില് ഗോപിനാഥന് ബാലകൃഷ്ണന്, b. 12 May 1945) is presently the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission of India. He is a former Chief Justice of India.
He was the first judge from the state of Kerala to become the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He was also the first person of Dalit origin to ascend to the post of the Chief Justice in the Supreme Court of India. His tenure lasting more than three years has been one of the longest in the Supreme Court of India.
Early life and education
K. G. Balakrishnan was born at Kaduthuruthy, near Vaikom, Kingdom of Travancore, into a MalayalamC.S.I Christian family. According to (Pappachan)Balakrishnan, his parents were the only source of inspiration for him: "Though my father 'Mr Joseph' was only a matriculate and my mother 'Pennamma' had her schooling only up to the seventh standard, they wanted to give their children the best education. When father being a christian he approched the Poikail Yohannan and embraced from christianity to hinduism and change his name as Gopinadh through Gazette notification and obtained a certificate as Scheduled Caste and get a job as a clerck His father was a clerk in the Vaikom munsiff court and was a classmate of K. R. Narayanan who also hailed from a Paravar caste family in Uzhavoor, a village near Vaikom. "
After completing his primary education in Thalayolaparambu, he finished school at the Government High School, Vaikom for which he had to walk 5 km every day. Subsequently, he joined the Maharaja's College at Ernakulam, where he studied for his B. Sc.. He took his Bachelor of Laws (L.L.B.) degree from the Government Law College, Ernakulam, and enrolled as an advocate in the Kerala Bar Council in 1968, beginning practice at the Munsiff's court, Vaikom. He then completed his L.L.M. in 1971.
Career
As an advocate he pleaded both criminal and civil cases in the Ernakulam court. He was later appointed as a Munsiff in the Kerala Judicial Services in 1973. He later resigned from the services and resumed practice as an advocate in the Kerala High Court. In 1985, he was appointed as a judge of the Kerala High Court, and was transferred to the Gujarat High Court in 1997. He became the Chief Justice of Gujarat High Court in 1998, and in 1999, he assumed charge as the Chief Justice of the High Court of Judicature at Madras. While being Chief Justice of Gujarat High Court, he also discharged duties of Governor of Gujarat for about two months.
On the 8 June 2000 he was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court. He was sworn in as the Chief Justice of India on 14 January 2007 by then President A. P. J. Abdul Kalam. After his retirement on 12 May 2010, he has been serving since 7 June 2010 as the Chairman of the National Human Rights Commission.
Public stances, opinions and views
Balakrishnan has tried to exempt the Office of the Chief Justice of India from the purview of the Right to Information Act. He ordered the Supreme Court registry to file an appeal before the Supreme Court against the Delhi High Court judgement making the office of the CJI amenable to the RTI act.He has also spoken about the need for amending the RTI act in the interests of the right to privacy.
Balakrishnan has said "due regard" must be given to the "personal autonomy" of rape victims to decide on whether they should marry the perpetrator or choose to give birth to a child conceived through forced crime.Lawyers and women's rights activists have expressed some reservations. Balakrishnan has stated that pornography sites and hate speeches should be banned from the internet. He also passed a judgment stating that journaling on the web any thing hateful even against a political party is liable for censorship.
On a visit to Kasaragode as NHRC Chairman initiating suo motu complaint, Balakrishnan felt there had been violations of human rights against the populace by the harmful spraying of the pesticide Endosulfan, and recommended the founding of a super-speciality hospital for the relief of the victims
Notable judgments
In a Kerala High Court judgement he asked the election commission to debar the political parties which impose hartals (Hindi: हड़ताल) on the public causing them suffering.
Making distribution of lunch compulsory in schools.
He was a part of the three-member Supreme Court bench that decided a PIL filed by two NDA leaders seeking the cancellation of bail of Rashtriya Janata Dal chief Lalu Prasad and his wife and former Bihar Chief Minister Rabri Devi for their interference in the judicial process in the disproportionate assets (DA) and Income Tax cases against them. The verdict (2-1) went in favour of Prasad. Justice Balakrishnan and Justice Lakshmanan said according to Article 233 of the Constitution of India the Governor has power to appoint a judge in the subordinate judiciary in consultation with the High Court Administration and held that it was the prerogative of the government to appoint any lawyer as public prosecutor. However, Justice S H Kapadia gave a dissenting judgement saying the income tax department should have filed an appeal against the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) order. On the issue of promotion of judge Munni Lal Paswan, he said, while competence and suitability of two other judges, who were promoted to the post of Special Judge along with Paswan, were determined on the basis of annual confidential report (ACRs) and inspecting the judges' reports, the criteria was not applied while promoting Paswan who had been found to be slow in disposing cases.
In 2010, he passed a judgement Prohibiting narcoanalysis in interrogations.
Controversies
Justice H. L. Gokhale of the Supreme Court has accused Balakrishnan of misrepresenting facts to conceal sacked telecom minister A. Raja's attempt to influence Justice R. Reghupathy of the Madras High Court, on behalf of two murder accused known to the DMK leader.
Balakrishnan's son-in-law and Indian Youth Congress leader P. V. Srinijan, who did not have any land four years ago, is now the owner of property worth hundreds of thousands of crores rupees. According to a report by news channel Asianet News, Srinijan had declared while contesting as a Congress candidate in the 2006 Assembly elections that he had no landed property. He had contested unsuccessfully from the SC reserved constituency of Njarackal in Ernakulam. In light of the charges, Srinijan resigned from the Youth Congress. Former Chief Justice J. S. Verma, former apex court Judge V. R. Krishna Iyer, noted jurist Fali S. Nariman, former member of NHRC Sudarshan Agrawal and the prominent activist lawyer Prashant Bhushan have called for Justice Balakrishnan to step down from the chairmanship of the NHRC pending an inquiry into the matter.
A petition-seeking vigilance probe into the allegations of "amassment of wealth disproportionate to their sources of income" by Balakrishnan's family members, was filed before the Income Tax Vigilance and Anti-Corruption Bureau. The income tax department confirmed recently that at least three of his relatives had held a large amount of black money.
In February 2012, the Supreme Court of India in a case filed by the NGO Common Cause, inquired of the government as to the progress in the probe against Justice Balakrishnan
Personal life
K. G. Balakrishnan is married to Nirmala and they have two daughters, Sony and Rani. His younger brother K. G. Bhaskaran was government pleader in Kerala High Court until recently.
Quotes
"Really, it is a matter of pride for us, but what I achieved is the result of hard labour and integrity."
"Both advocates and judges have an equal responsibility towards the society. So both deserve equal respect from the people."
"The forcible strikes by political parties has a very bad effect on common people. You can see how patients, passengers, and children suffer during strikes."
"Trial and defence lawyers should not terrorise witnesses. A judge should be alert and caring."
"Any dilution of the right to a fair trial for all individuals, however heinous their crimes may be, will be a moral loss against those who preach hatred and violence."
"In India, different types of crimes are on the increase. The death penalty will have a deterrent effect on the people. If you analyse [the cases], many of those who were given death penalty really deserved it in the cases imposed [on them]."
M.S. Apte,Justice
B.A., LL.B.
1969-1978
Justice Madhukar Shripad Apte, B.A., LL.B. : Born 13th July, 1916. Educated at the Shahu High School, Lagal; Willingdon College, Sangli and Sykees Law College, Kolhapur. Enrolled Advocate on 12th November 1951. Did both Civil and Criminal work at Kolhapur. Part-time professor in Shahji Law College, Kohapur. Jointed service as a Presidency Magistrate in October 1953. Appointed as Assistant Judge in January 1954. Promoted District Judge on 13th May 1956. District Judge at various places in the Maharashtra State. Joint Secretary to Government of Maharashtra in Law and Judiciary Department from July 1961 to October, 1965. Appointed Additional Judge, High Court at Bombay on 29th March, 1968 for one year. Reappointed Additional Judge, High Court at Bombay for two year w.e.f. 29th March, 1969. Appointed Permanent Judge on 16th September 1969. Retired on 13th July 1978.
M.D. Kambli, Justice
LL.B. 1976-1980
Justice Manmohan Dashrath Kambli, LL.B. : Born on 8th October, 1918. Educated at the Bharda New High School, Bombay, the Elphinstone College, Bombay and the Government Law College, Bombay. Enrolled as an Advocate on 16th August, 1962. Did Criminal and Civil work at Ratnagiri. Worked as Assistant District Judge, District and Sessions Judge and Charity Commissioner, Maharashtra. Appointed as an Additional Judge of the High Court at Bombay with effect 23rd August, 1976. Appointed Permanent Judge on 20th October, 1977 (A.N.). Retired on 8th August, 1980.
N.B. Naik, Justice
B.A.(Hons.), LL.B.
1974-1979
Justice Nijaguni Babanna Naik, B.A. (Hons.), LL.B. : Born 11th May, 1917. Educated at G.A. High School, Belgaum, Lingraj College, Belgaum, Syke's Law College, Kolhapur; and Raja Lakhamagouda Law College, Belgaum. Enrolled District Pleader on 7th September, 1940. Did both Civil and Criminal work in the District and Sessions Courts and subordinate Courts at Belgaum. Appointed Civil Judge on 23rd December, 1944. Judge of the Court of Small Causes at Bombay on 15th December, 1954. Assistant Judge in July, 1956, Special Officer, High Court at Bombay on 6th April, 1960. District and Sessions Judge on 15th August, 1960, and Judge, City Civil Court and Sessions Court for Greater Bombay on 4th April, 1966. Inspecting District Judge at Akola and Thana from 12th June, 1970 to 13th December, 1972. Appointed Additional Judge High Court at Bombay for two years on 14th December, 1972. Appointed Permanent Judge on 7th August, 1974. Retired on 11th May, 1979.
Neera Tanden
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Neera Tanden
Tanden in 2019
Assumed office
May 17, 2021
Serving with Mike Donilon, Cedric Richmond, and Gene Sperling
President Joe Biden
Preceded by Jared Kushner
Personal details
Born September 10, 1970
Bedford, Massachusetts, U.S.
Political party Democratic
Spouse(s)
(m. 1999)
Children 2
Education University of California, Los Angeles (BA)
Neera Tanden (born September 10, 1970) is an American political consultant and government official. She is currently serving as a senior advisor to President Joe Biden. She previously was president of the Center for American Progress, a liberal advocacy organization, where she worked in different capacities since its founding in 2003.
Tanden has notably worked on several Democratic presidential campaigns, including those of Michael Dukakis in 1988, Bill Clinton in 1992, and Barack Obama in 2008. Tanden was a senior staffer to Hillary Clinton during her 2000 election to a United States Senate seat in New York, and during Clinton's tenure as a Senator. Tanden advised Clinton during her run for the 2008 Democratic nomination, and later helped her defeat Bernie Sanders to win the nomination in 2016, and run against Donald Trump in the 2016 general election. In her government service with the Obama administration, Tanden helped draft the Affordable Care Act (ACA).
In November 2020, then President-elect Joe Biden announced he would nominate Tanden as Office of Management and Budget (OMB) director. However, Tanden asked for the nomination to be withdrawn after Senator Joe Manchin announced that he would not vote in favor of confirmation. In May 2021, Tanden was appointed as a Senior Advisor to the President.
Early life and education
Neera Tanden was born on September 10, 1970, in Bedford, Massachusetts, to immigrant parents from India. She has a brother, Raj. Her parents divorced when she was five, after which Tanden's mother was on welfare for nearly two years before obtaining a job as a travel agent.
Tanden received a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 1992 and graduated from Yale Law School with a Juris Doctor in 1996. At Yale Law School, she was submissions editor for the Yale Law & Policy Review.
As a freshman at the University of California, Los Angeles, Tanden met her future husband, artist Benjamin Edwards. Edwards and Tanden both volunteered on Michael Dukakis's unsuccessful run for President in 1988. Tanden worked as a precinct leader in the Bel Air district of West Los Angeles where many households had already contributed to the Dukakis campaign.
Career
Tanden has worked on domestic policy on Capitol Hill, in think tanks, and for various Democratic senatorial and presidential campaigns.
Work with the Clintons
Tanden has been regarded as a Clinton loyalist and personal friend of Hillary Clinton, whose professional life has been significantly defined by her work with the Clintons. She worked with President Bill Clinton's campaign on new energy policies, and health-care reform, as associate director for domestic policy in the Clinton White House, and as a domestic policy advisor in the First Lady's Office.
In 2016, Bruce Reed, a Democratic political operative, said Tanden played a role in implementing Clinton's welfare reform bill, the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act, signed in 1996. Tanden denied the claim and in response posted a screenshot of what she claimed was an email from Reed.
In 1999 and 2000, Tanden was deputy campaign manager and policy director for Hillary Clinton during her successful senatorial campaign in New York. After the election, Tanden served as Senator Clinton's legislative director from 2003 to 2005.
Tanden was Hillary Clinton's policy director for Clinton's unsuccessful bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. In a 2019 article, the New York Times cited a source claiming that Tanden punched ThinkProgress website editor and future Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign manager Faiz Shakir in the chest for asking Clinton about her Iraq War vote. Tanden later insisted that she had not "slugged" him but had pushed him.
Tanden was an unpaid adviser to Clinton's successful 2016 primary season nomination campaign and unsuccessful general election campaign in opposition to Republican candidate Donald Trump, while also running the Center for American Progress. After Hillary Clinton secured the Democratic nomination for president in 2016, Tanden was named to her transition team.Tanden was considered a candidate for a top White House job, had Clinton won the presidency.
2008 Obama general election campaign
After Barack Obama was nominated as the Democratic presidential candidate, Tanden was one of the first, and also one of the few former-Clinton campaign staffers to join his team She was domestic policy director for his successful general election campaign.
Obama administration
Tanden served in the Obama administration as senior adviser to Secretary Kathleen Sebelius of the Department of Health and Human Services. She helped to draft the administration's health care legislation, including work specific to its proposed, but later withdrawn, public option. She also negotiated with Congress and stakeholders on several provisions of the bill. She has been described as one of the "key architects" of the Affordable Care Act.
Center for American Progress
Tanden speaking in 2013 on behalf of the Center for American Progress
In 2003, Tanden had a central role in the founding of the Center for American Progress (CAP). Tanden worked as Senior Vice President for Domestic Policy, while also serving as Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and, starting in 2010, as Chief Operating Officer.
On November 1, 2011, Tanden succeeded John Podesta as CAP's president and CEO
In 2016, a hacker obtained access to Podesta's private emails, which included exchanges with Tanden. The emails were then published on WikiLeaks. In one exchange, on August 11, 2015, while discussing news that Harvard University law professor Lawrence Lessig was exploring a bid for the Democratic nomination, Tanden wrote of Lessig, "I fucking hate that guy." Lessig responded to the incident by saying that while he supported whistle blowing and a pardon of Edward Snowden, Tanden should not have to be burdened with having her private emails scrutinized and that it was not in the public interest. Tanden called the release of her personal communications, which often feature her blunt private assessments, a painful experience to endure.
In 2016, blogger Matt Bruenig, a supporter of Bernie Sanders, was fired from the think tank Demos after tweets that called Tanden and Joan Walsh "geriatrics" and Tanden a "scumbag". Demos cited a past pattern of "online harassment of people with whom he disagrees" as the reason for his dismissal, but some commentators suggested Tanden was involved in his firing, allegations she denied.
After the 2016 election and Clinton's loss, Tanden refocused the work of the Center for American Progress, aiming to have the think tank, and especially its advocacy arm (the Center for American Progress Action Fund), serve as a "central hub for Trump resistance" as well as playing a leading role in shaping the healthcare debate within the Democratic Party. In 2020, the group promoted their "Medicare Extra for All" plan, made as a counter to Medicare for All which, despite the name, did not call for as much coverage. The idea was widely panned by progressive activists, but largely formed the basis for the healthcare plan provided by Beto O'Rourke's 2020 presidential campaign.
Tanden as CAP president
In 2018, following reports by BuzzFeed News of sexual harassment allegations within CAP, Tanden revealed to a meeting of CAP's entire staff the first name of a CAP employee anonymously accusing a manager of sexual harassment, leading many people in the room to gasp and Tanden to apologize.
On April 28, 2020, Tanden was named to New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy's Restart and Recovery Commission. The commission was tasked with preparing the state to reopen after its COVID-19 lockdown.
In 2021, after having been named a Biden advisor, Tanden stepped down from her leadership of CAP, with Patrick Gaspard taking over her roles as president and CEO.
Office of Management and Budget nomination
On November 30, 2020, President-elect Joe Biden introduced Tanden as his nominee for Director of the Office of Management and Budget. Immediately afterwards, Tanden deleted over 1,000 of her previous tweets, and changed her Twitter bio from "progressive" to "liberal". During the confirmation hearing, Tanden apologized for several of her tweets attacking Republican senators, including tweets calling Susan Collins "the worst", comparing Ted Cruz to vampires, and using the nickname "Moscow Mitch" for Mitch McConnell and comparing him to Lord Voldemort. Senator John Cornyn described Tanden as "radioactive" in contrast to other Biden nominees he felt were more acceptable. Senator John Kennedy stated that she "called Senator Sanders everything but an ignorant slut", a reference to a 1970s Saturday Night Live catch phrase. NPR described her as "Biden's most controversial Cabinet pick".
Many members of the 2016 and 2020 Bernie Sanders presidential campaigns, such as Briahna Joy Gray, strongly dislike Tanden and have drawn an explicit distinction between "progressives and Neera Tanden"; Politico described her nomination as "the equivalent of rubbing salt in the wound".
In February 2021, Senator Joe Manchin said he opposed her nomination due to "overtly partisan statements" in the past, putting her approval in doubt due to the 50–50 split in the Senate between both parties. Other senators, including Susan Collins, Rob Portman, Mitt Romney, and Pat Toomey said they would also vote against Tanden's nomination. Collins argued that Tanden's deletion of over 1,000 of her tweets "raises concerns about her commitment to transparency". Some senators remained undecided after meeting with Tanden, including Lisa Murkowski, Bernie Sanders, and Kyrsten Sinema.The Biden administration originally stood by her nomination publicly, but other candidates for the position began to be considered after Manchin's opposition became public. Conservative commentator Hugh Hewitt asked Senate Republicans to forgive her and approve the nomination but none indicated they would do so. Senate panels which were set to vote on her nomination postponed consideration.
On March 2, 2021, in response to a request from Tanden, the Biden administration withdrew Tanden's nomination to head the Office of Management and Budget.The White House also made public Tanden's explanation, which read in part, "Unfortunately, it now seems clear that there is no path forward to gain confirmation, and I do not want continued consideration of my nomination to be a distraction from your other priorities." President Biden said he had the “utmost respect” for Tanden and pledged he would find a role for her somewhere in his administration On March 25, 2021, her nomination was officially withdrawn.
Senior Advisor to the President
Tanden was appointed as a senior advisor to President Biden on May 14, 2021. In this role, Tanden will plan for possible policy changes awaiting a Supreme Court decision on Republican challenges to Obamacare and will initiate a review of the United States Digital Service.
Political views
Tanden in 2016
Tanden has been described by The Washington Post as a "progressive", by Business Insider as a "centrist", and by Vox as "one of the more liberal members of Clintonland". She is regarded as a loyalist and confidante of Bill and Hillary Clinton. She credits her experiences growing up relying on government assistance as the reason she has entered politics and the motivator of her career.She is known for her outspoken and prolific Twitter presence, where she has criticized lawmakers both to her political left and right. Senator Bernie Sanders wrote a letter in 2019 accusing Tanden of "maligning my staff and supporters and belittling progressive ideas".
In 2019, Tanden welcomed the arrest of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, accusing him of being "the agent of a proto fascist state, Russia, to undermine democracy."
Domestic policy
Much of Tanden's work relates to healthcare policy in America. She worked on the passage of the Affordable Care Act during the Obama administration. Tanden supports a multi-payer universal healthcare system, and opposes single-payer healthcare, including Medicare for All proposals.
Tanden has argued that cuts to social welfare programs, including cuts to Social Security, Medicaid, and Medicare, should be considered as a part of long term deficit reduction During her presidency, the Center for American Progress (CAP) has advocated for pegging periodic increases in Social Security benefits to the chained Consumer Price Index or chained CPI, which would regress the program to more austere accounting methods to help its beneficiaries keep pace with inflation.
Tanden has been a critic of the policy proposals and supporters of U.S. Senator and former presidential candidate Bernie Sanders. During the 2016 Democratic Party presidential primaries, she opposed Sanders's signature proposals of a $15 per hour minimum wage and single-payer healthcare. However, she expressed support for the Fight for $15 movement in 2017.
Foreign policy
Tanden has been described as "hawkish". In September 2013, Tanden tweeted that "an unpoliced world is dangerous." The Center for American Progress has been described as having close ties to Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. In 2016, she met India's Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Tanden has condemned Modi's government for anti-democratic actions and creating a climate of violence against Muslims in India.
Israel
In 2015, Tanden and CAP criticized Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for engaging in what they called hyper-partisan activity during his trip to Washington, D.C., to lobby against the Obama-backed Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action. When Netanyahu visited D.C. again later in the year, he requested an audience before the left-leaning CAP. Tanden agreed to Netanyahu's request, saying it would be hypocritical to do otherwise, adding the event would include a question and answer segment between attendees and the prime minister. Tanden's decision drew harsh criticism from progressive organizations, many of whom said she was giving Netanyahu "legitimacy" by allowing him to speak before a group like CAP. Tandem responded by saying, "It was not an easy decision but at the end of the day we are a think tank. He's the leader of a country with which the US has a very strong relationship. There are issues we care about in Israel and the region. So we agreed to hold a forum."
She called the U.S. recognition of Israel's annexation of the Golan Heights in March 2019 as "a blatant political move" to benefit Netanyahu.
Tanden in 2014
Libya
Before the U.S.–NATO bombing of Libya, Tanden tweeted her support for Gaddafi's removal.
In October 2011, Tanden said (in a private email made public by WikiLeaks) that the US had "a giant deficit" and it "doesn't seem crazy" to have "oil rich" nations such as Libya "partially pay [the US] back" for intervention. Tanden said this would be preferable to cuts to Head Start, WIC or Medicaid. Journalist Glenn Greenwald described Tanden's comments as similar to Donald Trump's statements on Iraq's national oil resources: "I say we should take it and pay ourselves back."
Syria
In September 2013, when President Obama was considering bombing Syria, Tanden tweeted: "On Syria, while I don't want to be the world's policeman, an unpoliced world is dangerous. The U.S. may be the only adult in the room left." Tanden said she opposed deploying U.S. soldiers to Syria.
Honors
2012: Tanden was named one of the 25 "Most Influential Women in Washington" by National Journal.
2014: Elle named Tanden one of the ten most powerful women in Washington, D.C.
Penmetsa Satyanarayana Raju
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
P. Satyanarayana Raju
In office
1964–1965
Preceded by P. Chandra Reddy
Succeeded by Manohar Pershad
In office
1965–1966
Personal details
Born 17 August 1908
Ajjaram village, Tanuku Taluq, West Godavari dt, India
Died 20 April 1966
Justice Penmetsa Satyanarayana Raju B.A., B.L. (17 August 1908 – 20 April 1966) was Chief Justice of Andhra Pradesh High Court.
He was born on 17 August 1908 at Ajjaram village in Tanuku taluk in West Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh, India. His parents are P. Ramabhadra Raju and Subhadramma. He is their eldest son and has two brothers and sisters.
He was educated in Board High School, Tanuku, West Godavari District and Intermediate in Vizianagaram. He did graduation Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) from Maharajah's College, Vizianagaram. He did Bachelor of Law (B.L.) Degree from Madras Law College and joined the Madras Bar in 1930. He was associated with late Sri T. Prakasam for 3 years and later with Sri P. Satyanarayana Rao. He became the Government Pleader of the Composite state of Madras in 1950 and State Counsel in 1951. When Andhra State was formed he became the Government Pleader of Andhra State in 1953.
He has visited Russia in 1964-65 along with the Chief Justice of Supreme Court P. B. Gajendragadkar to study their Legal system.
He was appointed Judge, Supreme Court of India on 20 October 1965. He died in harness on 20 April 1966 in New Delhi.
Padmanabhan Subramanian Poti
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Hon'ble Justice
P. Subramonian Poti
In office
28 September 1983 – 1 February 1985
In office
June 1983 – August 1983
acting: January 1981 - June 1983
In office
1969–1981
Personal details
Born 2 February 1923
Died December 1998
Citizenship Indian
Nationality Indian
IndianPadmanabhan Subramonian Poti (2 February 1923 ) was a former Chief Justice of the Kerala and Gujarat High Courts in India. After retiring he assisted the Indian People's Tribunal on Environment and Human Rights (IPT).
Career
Poti was born on 2 February 1923 at Trivandrum in Kerala. He studied at the University College Trivandrum, graduating with a degree in Science. He then attended the Government Law College Thiruvananthapuram where he earned a B.L. degree. In September 1945 he became an Advocate in what was then the High Court of Travancore.
Poti started his career as a junior to U.P. Kakkillya, Advocate General of the State and later Chief Justice. Between 1957 and 1960 he worked part-time for the government of Kerala as a Law Officer in Taxes. From 1966 to 1970 he served on the Kerala Law Academy as a member of the Executive Committee. From 1967 to 1969 he was a member of the Kerala University faculty of law, and as Advocate General of Kerala was chairman of the Kerala Bar Council. In 1969 P.S. Poti was appointed a judge in the Kerala High Court. In January 1981 he became Acting Chief Justice and in June 1983 was confirmed as permanent Chief Justice of the high court of Kerala. In August 1983 he was transferred to Gujarat as Chief Justice.
Major rulings
P.S. Poti made several significant judgments in favor of the rights of poor people fighting for justice. In January 1985 P.S. Poti gave judgement on an application for government benefits by the families of mill workers who had died while the mills where they worked were closed. The government was arguing that the workers had in effect been dismissed, and were refusing to pay. P.S. Poti said "Merely enacting laws would not be an adequate protection or extension of a necessary benefit. Such laws have to be implemented with a sense of commitment". He found the government liable to pay, liable for all costs and directed the government to pay interest at 12% on the unpaid monies.
P.S. Poti pointed out in 1985 that although the original Indian Constitution prohibits discrimination, an amendment in 1951 empowers the state to make reservation in favor of any disadvantaged group. The question of the legality of reservations for tribal people, scheduled castes, women and other groups is therefore not an issue, assuming the groups are considered disadvantaged In 1985 P.S. Poti heard a petition from the tribal people of nineteen villages in Gujarat whose land was being flooded by the Sardar Sarovar project. The government claimed it had the right to arbitrarily evict the people. Poti would not rule on the legal issue. He said the matter should be settled out of court and the villagers should receive full compensation.
Post-retirement
After retirement P.S. Poti served on the Indian People's Human Rights Tribunal which investigated the Chintapalli Arson Case, where police had destroyed tribal hamlets in Visakhapatnam district of Andhra Pradesh. The tribunal released a report on 18 October 1988. The report indicted the policemen responsible for the crime and the AP government for their forest and tribal policy. In 1989 he was elected president of the All-India Lawyers Union.
In 1990 the national government led by the Janata Dal appointed P.S. Poti and P.A. Rosha, a retired officer of the Indian Police Service, to a committee to investigate the events of the 1984 anti-Sikh riots in Delhi. Sajjan Kumar had been accused of being involved in inciting the violence. The Poti-Rosha Committee examined more than 1,000 affidavits. 30 cases were recommended for prosecution. The Central Bureau of Investigation tried to arrest Kumar, but he secured anticipatory bail. Both members of the panel resigned in October 1990.
In 1994 the Indian People's Tribunal investigated the Rajaji National Park, where the authorities wanted to remove the Gujjars who had traditionally lived in the forest. The tribunal met forest officials, scientists, NGO staff and the Gujjars. P.S. Poti prepared the IPT report, which recommended that the Gujjars be allowed to stay but assisted if they decided to leave. This would require a change to the laws, which specified that no humans could live in a national park. Justice Poti interviewed the many stakeholders, showed the complexity of the issues, and showed that moving the residents out of the forest would not guarantee its survival. His report on the Rajaji National Park provided a model for similar investigations of other protected areas in India.
Padmanabhan Subramonian Poti died in Kochi, Kerala in February 1998 of a heart attack.
P. Theagaraya Chetty
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pitti Theagaraya Chetty
Born : 27 April 1852
Died : 28 April 1925 (aged 73)
Occupation : lawyer, businessman, politician
Sir Pitti Theagaraya Chetty KCSI (27 April 1852 – 28 April 1925) was an Indian lawyer, industrialist and a prominent political leader from the erstwhile Madras province. He was one of the founders of the Justice Party in 1916 along with C. Natesa Mudaliar, Dr. T. M. Nair. T.Nagar is a locality in Chennai which is named after him. On 1919 January 1, the title Dewan Bahadur was awarded to him
Theagaraya Chetty was born in Madras Presidency. After graduating from Presidency College, Madras he served as a corporator and legislator. He had an avid interest in politics and served as a member of the Indian National Congress before founding the South Indian Liberal Federation in 1917. He served as the President of the federation from 1917 till his death in 1925.
Early life
Chetty was born in Egathur, Madras Presidency on 27 April 1852. He did his schooling in Chennai and graduated in law from Presidency College, Madras. On graduation, he entered public life and served as a member of the Corporation of Madras from 1882 to 1922. He also served terms as the President of the Corporation of Madras, and then as a Councillor till 1922. He was the first non-official President of the Madras Corporation.
He was one of the founder-members of the South Indian Chamber of Commerce and served as its President. from 1910 to 1921. When the Industrial Conference came to Madras, Theagaraya Chetty was the Chairman of the Reception Committee. Theagaraya Chetty fought on behalf of the Indian Patriot newspaper and its editor Karunakara Menon against Dr T. M. Nair who later became his close associate.
The Dravidian Movement
The Madras Non-Brahmin Association was formed in 1909 by two lawyers from Madras city, P. Subramanyam and M. Purushotham Naidu. Sir Theagaroya Chetty did not involve himself in the movement until 1912, when the Madras United League (Later renamed as Madras Dravidian Association) was formed.
At a meeting held in Madras in November 1916 by a group of about thirty people, including Theagaraya Chetti and Dr. T. M. Nair, it was resolved to start a company for publishing newspapers advocating the cause of the non-Brahmin community. The newspaper was named Justice and started publishing from 26 February 1917 onwards. Dr. T. M. Nair was its first Editor.
A political party was organised by the South Indian People's Association under the leadership of Sir P.Theagaroya Chetty and Dr. T. M. Nair and was named the South Indian Liberal Federation. It later came to be popularly known as the Justice Party after the English daily Justice which the party published.The Federation was organised in October 1917 and its objectives were defined as :
to create and promote the education, social, economic, political, material and moral progress of all communities in Southern India other than Brahmins,
to discuss public questions and make a true and timely representation to Government of the views and interests of the people of Southern India with the object of safeguarding and promoting the interests of all communities including Dalits and
to disseminate by public lectures, by distribution of literature and by other means sound and liberal views in regard to public opinion "
Early Years of the Justice Party
Theagaraya Chetty was elected the first President of the Justice Party and served as President until his death in 1925. A constitution was drawn on 17 October 1917. District and city boards were established all over the Presidency.
In the initial stages, the Justice Party concentrated its energies on work of a social character than political. During this period, the Justice Party held all-India conferences to unite SCs and Its all over the country. The Justice Party argued for separate electorates and reservations in government jobs and civil service for Dalits, at the British Parliament in London. In 1919, Dr. T. M. Nair, the President of the Justice Party and leader of the delegation died in London at the age of fifty-one and was succeeded as President by Theagaraya Chetty.
1920 elections
When elections were held in December 1920 in the Madras Presidency as per the Montagu-Chelmsford Reforms, the Justice Party obtained a comfortable majority by winning 63 seats out of 98. The Governor of Madras invited Theagaraya Chetty to form the Government. However, Theagaraya Chetty refused on account of the ethical rule that head of a political party can't hold a post in the cabinet too. As a result, A. Subbarayalu Reddiar was appointed Chief Minister. He served for a few months before being succeeded by the Raja of Panagal.
Attitude towards Brahmins
In his speech as the President of the Reception Committee of the First Non-Brahmin Confederation, Theagaraya Chetty spoke:
Towards the Brahmins, we cherish no feelings of bitterness. If we have to fight them we do so in the interests of truth and justice, and we shall be prepared to extend to them too the right hand of fellowship, when they shall see the wrongs inflicted upon us and repent. Ours is essentially a movement of love and not of hate, or love based upon a sense of what is due to the various classes which constitute the population of this vast and ancient land
Death and legacy
History holds the fact that the credit of demolishing the influence of brahminism against the other communities belongs to the Justice Party and its successor party Dravidar Kazhagam. Theagaraya Chetty died on 28 April 1925 and was succeeded by the Raja of Panagal as the President of the Justice Party. He is usually credited for the victories of the Justice Party in the 1920 and 1923 elections and for turning the Justice Party into a formidable force in the Presidency that continued to be so for a couple of decades.
The locality T Nagar in Chennai is named after him. It is an important commercial centre today.
Justice Pritinker Diwaker
Justice Pritinker Diwaker (born November 22, 1961) is a retired Indian jurist who served as the 50th Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court, one of India's oldest and busiest high courts. His judicial career, spanning over three decades, is marked by a transition from advocacy in central India to high-level judicial administration in Uttar Pradesh. Known for his commitment to judicial accessibility, case management reforms, and humane interpretations of the law, Diwaker retired on November 21, 2023, upon reaching the age of superannuation (62 years for high court judges). As a first-generation lawyer in his family, his journey exemplifies dedication and resilience in the legal profession.
Early Life and Education
Born in 1961, Justice Diwaker hails from a background in central India, specifically associated with Jabalpur in Madhya Pradesh (now part of the unified Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh judicial ecosystem). Details about his family remain largely private, with public records emphasizing his role as a pioneering lawyer from a non-legal family lineage. He pursued his legal education at Rani Durgawati Vishwavidyalaya (also known as Durgawati University) in Jabalpur, graduating with an LL.B. degree in 1984. This institution, known for its rigorous legal training, laid the foundation for his career in constitutional, civil, and criminal law.
Legal Practice and Advocacy
Upon enrollment as an advocate with the Bar Council of Madhya Pradesh in 1984, Diwaker began practicing at the principal bench of the Madhya Pradesh High Court in Jabalpur. His practice focused on a broad spectrum of cases, including constitutional matters, civil disputes, and criminal trials. He served as standing counsel for major public sector entities such as Steel Authority of India Limited (SAIL), State Bank of India (SBI), Chhattisgarh Gramin Bank, Bank of Baroda, and IDBI Bank, showcasing his expertise in corporate and public interest litigation.
Diwaker's advocacy career gained momentum after the bifurcation of Madhya Pradesh and the establishment of the Chhattisgarh High Court on November 1, 2000. He shifted his practice to Bilaspur, the new high court's seat, where he was designated a Senior Advocate by the Chhattisgarh High Court in January 2005—a rare honor reflecting his standing in the bar. He also contributed to legal governance as a member of the Madhya Pradesh State Bar Council for seven years and the Chhattisgarh State Bar Council for five years, advocating for professional standards and bar reforms.
Judicial Career
Diwaker's elevation to the bench was a pivotal moment, though he initially hesitated to accept the offer from the collegium in 2009, citing his deep attachment to advocacy. He was appointed as a Judge of the Chhattisgarh High Court on March 31, 2009, where he served for nearly a decade, handling diverse cases and earning praise for his satisfaction in judicial duties.
Transfer to Allahabad High Court
On October 3, 2018, Diwaker was transferred to the Allahabad High Court under Article 222 of the Constitution, as recommended by the Supreme Court Collegium headed by then-Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra. This inter-high court transfer, aimed at addressing judicial administrative needs, was controversial for Diwaker. In his retirement speech on November 21, 2023, he candidly alleged that the order "seemed to have been issued with an ill intention to harass me," describing it as a "sudden turn of events" and an undeserved "shower of extra affection" from CJI Misra for unknown reasons. Despite initial reluctance and a representation against it (which the collegium rejected in September 2018), he assumed office and adapted effectively.
At Allahabad, Diwaker quickly rose through seniority. Following the elevation of Chief Justice Rajesh Bindal to the Supreme Court on February 9, 2023, he was appointed Acting Chief Justice on February 13, 2023, as the senior-most puisne judge—a convention under judicial norms.
Tenure as Chief Justice
On March 26, 2023, President Droupadi Murmu appointed Diwaker as the 50th Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court, with Uttar Pradesh Governor Anandiben Patel administering the oath in a ceremonial event attended by judges, lawyers, and dignitaries. His eight-month tenure (until November 21, 2023) focused on modernizing court operations amid a heavy caseload—Allahabad High Court handles over 1 million pending cases annually.
Key administrative initiatives included:
- Enhancing judicial accessibility through digital tools and streamlined case management.
- Reforms in prison systems and societal upliftment, praised for reshaping institutional fabrics.
- Addressing lawyer grievances, such as referring a Bar Council of Uttar Pradesh complaint on police lathi charges in Hapur to a special committee chaired by Justice Manoj Kumar Gupta.
- Suo motu cognizance of deficiencies in child care institutions, issuing directions for urgent reforms.
- Directing state support for victims of animal attacks, extending victim compensation schemes akin to those under the CrPC.
Diwaker emphasized work-life balance for judges and praised the bar-bench fraternity, noting the "perfect balance" his family maintained between professional demands and personal life. He credited CJI D.Y. Chandrachud's collegium for "rectifying the injustice" of his 2018 transfer by recommending his elevation to Chief Justice.
Notable Judgments
Throughout his career, Diwaker authored or co-authored several landmark decisions emphasizing constitutional fidelity, litigant rights, and procedural fairness. Below is a table summarizing key judgments:
| Case Name | Year | Key Holding | Bench |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shashank Singh v. Hon'ble High Court of Judicature at Allahabad | 2021 | Under Article 233, judicial officers cannot compete for District Judge posts via the advocate quota, regardless of prior bar experience; direct recruitment rules are sacrosanct. | Single Bench (Diwaker, J.) |
| Vimal Kumar Maurya v. State of U.P. | 2023 | Acquitted appellant of life sentence under IPC Section 326-A (acid attack); evidence insufficient for conviction without corroboration. | Division Bench (Diwaker, J. & Srivastava, J.) |
| Munni Devi v. State of UP | 2020 | Authentic dying declarations can form the sole basis for conviction if voluntary and credible; no mandatory corroboration needed. | Division Bench (Diwaker, J.) |
| Unnamed Blacklisting Case (Agra Development Authority) | ~2020 | Blacklisting notices must specify consequences and grounds; procedural fairness essential to prevent arbitrary state action. | Single Bench (Diwaker, J.) |
| Unnamed Liquor Policy PIL | ~2021 | State liquor business notifications are policy matters; courts cannot mandate specific framing unless unconstitutional. | Division Bench (Diwaker, J.) |
| Amity University Attendance PIL | 2023 | Allowed MBA student to appear for exams despite portal glitch showing low attendance; directed technical fixes for equity. | Single Bench (Diwaker, CJ) |
Legacy and Retirement
Diwaker's farewell on November 21, 2023, was a full court reference attended by judges like Justices Manoj Kumar Gupta and Attau Rahman Masoodi, who lauded his "lasting impact" through judgments and reforms. Lawyers from districts like Meerut hoped his legacy would inspire accessible justice. Post-retirement, he has maintained a low profile, with no public engagements reported as of November 2025.
His candid retirement remarks on the 2018 transfer sparked discussions on collegium transparency, underscoring the human element in judicial appointments. Diwaker's career, from a reticent advocate to a reform-oriented Chief Justice, remains a testament to judicial integrity amid systemic challenges.
Justice P.B. Sawant
Justice P.B. Sawant (full name Prakash Balkrishna Sawant or simply P.B. Sawant; 30 June 1930 – 15 February 2021) was a distinguished Indian jurist, former Judge of the Supreme Court of India, and a prominent post-retirement public figure known for his staunch defense of civil liberties, human rights, secularism, anti-communalism, anti-caste principles, and the rights of the poor and oppressed. Often described as one of the "last creative judges" with strong progressive convictions (comparable to Justice V.R. Krishna Iyer), he combined judicial impartiality with deep social commitment, remaining active in public life for over 25 years after retirement.
Early Life and Education
Born on 30 June 1930 (exact place not widely detailed, but associated with Maharashtra/Bombay region).
- Earned a B.A. (Special) Honours in Economics and LL.B. from Bombay University (now University of Mumbai).
- Began his career as a lecturer at New Law College, Bombay (around 1965), teaching subjects like Private International Law and Constitutional Law.
- Enrolled as an advocate in 1957; practiced at the Bombay High Court (practicing all branches of law, often representing laborers, farmers, and marginalized groups) and later at the Supreme Court of India.
Judicial Career
- 1973: Appointed as a Judge (Additional, later permanent) of the Bombay High Court, serving for over 16 years.
- Notable: Conducted an official inquiry into the Air-India aircraft crash in June 1982 (a significant aviation disaster probe).
- 6 October 1989: Elevated to Judge of the Supreme Court of India.
- Served until retirement on 29 June 1995 (reached superannuation age).
- Key contributions on the bench:
- Part of constitution benches in landmark cases like the Mandal Commission (reservation for OBCs) and S.R. Bommai (1994 – federalism and misuse of Article 356).
- Authored/co-authored judgments upholding media freedom (e.g., 1995 ruling that airwaves are public property, rejecting state monopoly).
- Known for impartiality despite perceived leftist leanings from pre-judicial activism; emphasized civil liberties, human rights, and constitutional values.
Post-Retirement Activism and Public Roles (1995–2021)
After retirement, Justice Sawant became a vocal public intellectual and activist, often chairing inquiries and tribunals on social justice issues:
- Chairman, Press Council of India (PCI): Revitalized the body during his tenure; introduced guidelines (e.g., no publication of exit polls until all voting ends); defended media rights and fought attempts to weaken the council. Also served as Chairman of the World Association of Press Councils.
- 2002: Served on the Indian People's Tribunal (with Justice Hosbet Suresh and others) probing communal violence and related issues.
- 2002 Gujarat Riots Probe: Part of an independent panel investigating the 2002 Gujarat violence.
- 2003: Chaired the P.B. Sawant Commission (appointed by Maharashtra government) to investigate corruption allegations against four state ministers (Nawab Malik, Padmasinh Patil, Suresh Jain, Vijaykumar Gavit).
- 2017: Co-convener of the Elgar Parishad conclave in Pune (December 31, 2017), which addressed Dalit rights and was controversially linked to later Bhima Koregaon events.
- Other involvements: President of Mahatma Phule Samta Pratishthan; active in anti-communal, anti-caste campaigns; supported rights of the poor, farmers, laborers, and oppressed sections.
- Famous incident: Filed a ₹100 crore defamation suit against Times Now (2008) after the channel mistakenly used his photo (instead of another judge) while reporting a provident fund scam—highlighting his stand against media irresponsibility.
Personal Life and Legacy
- Survived by his wife, two daughters, and a son.
- Died on 15 February 2021 at his home in Pune due to cardiac arrest, aged 90 (or 91 in some reports).
- Tributes described him as a "champion of civil liberties," a defender of democracy, secularism, and the marginalized; his political experience (pre-judiciary leftist leanings) enhanced rather than compromised his judicial integrity.
- Remembered in outlets like Frontline, The Wire, SCC Online, SabrangIndia, and others for upholding constitutional morality, media ethics, and social justice even after retirement.
Justice P.B. Sawant exemplified a judge who transcended the bench to engage actively with society's pressing issues, leaving a legacy as a principled, progressive voice in Indian jurisprudence and public life.
RAJENDRAN T.G.
ENROLL :
Mobile : 9847001204 ,
Email : mrsinghco@gmail.com
Office
M/s MR Singh & Co., KK Padmanabhan Road
Pin : 682018
Phone : 0484-2396969
District : Ernakulam
Residence
Thandayamparambil, Konthuruthi Lane, Deshabhimani Road
Pin : 682017
Phone : 0484-2537195
District : Ernakulam
Rabinder Singh (judge)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lord Justice Singh
Court of Appeal judge
Assumed office
2 October 2017
Appointed by Elizabeth II
Preceded by Sir David Kitchin
Personal details
Born 6 March 1964
Delhi, India
Nationality British
Profession Court of Appeal judge
Sir Rabinder Singh (born 6 March 1964), styled The Rt. Hon. Lord Justice Singh, is an English Court of Appeal judge and President of the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, formerly a High Court judge of the Queen's Bench Division, a Queen's Counsel and barrister, formerly a founding member of Matrix Chambers and a legal academic.
Early life and education
Rabinder Singh was born in 1964 in Delhi to a Sikh family. He grew up in a working-clas part of Bristol and attended the private Bristol Grammar School. From an early age Singh had an interest in law and liked the thought of one day becoming an advocate. At Trinity College, Cambridge, he earned a double first in law in 1985. Between 1985 and 1986 Singh spent a year as a Harkness Fellow at the University of California at Berkeley studying for his LL.M. During his time at Berkeley he became interested in constitutional law, particularly misuse of power and how the law holds those in power to account. This interest was partly fuelled by the late Professor Frank Newman at Berkeley, a pioneer in the field of human rights law and by his studies on the United States Constitution at Berkeley. In 1988 he attended the Inns of Court School of Law to undertake his final examinations, and he was called to the Bar at Lincoln's Inn in July 1989.
Career at the Bar (1989–2011)
4–5 Gray's Inn Square
Singh undertook pupillage at the barristers' chambers 4–5 Gray's Inn Square where he became a tenant in 1990. He remained there for 10 years specialising in public and administrative law, employment law, European Community law, human rights law, commercial law and media law. Soon after he was made a tenant, Cherie Booth QC also joined 4–5 Grays Inn Square as a tenant from another set. From 1992 to 2002 he was one of the Junior Counsel to the Crown (from 2000 on the A Panel). From 1997 to 2002 Singh was Additional Junior Counsel to the Inland Revenue.
Matrix Chambers
Singh, Booth and 5 other tenants from 4–5 Gray's Inn Square, together with 16 barristers from other chambers, set up Matrix Chambers in 2000. With the formation of Matrix, none of the five silks signed up to Matrix at the time was estimated to earn much more than £200,000 a year, Singh however was believed to be the biggest earner of them all. One senior clerk said: "The problem they will have is that Rabinder Singh is by far their biggest earner. He will be carrying the rent which could cause a lot of internal politics." Singh has since gone on to be named the Barrister of the Year by the Lawyer Magazine. In 2001 and was appointed Queen's Counsel in 2002 earning him the professional title of 'Silk' and being styled with the suffix QC. He is acknowledged as a Leading Silk in Administrative and Public law; Singh is described by Chambers & Partners Legal 500 2006 as being "known for his expertise in cross-disciplinary work" and as "one of the most impressive younger silks" in the area of Administrative and Public laws. Singh was the Chair of the Bar Council Equality and Diversity Committee (Race and Religion) from 2004 to 2006, also, from 2006 to 2008 Singh was the Chair of the Constitutional and Administrative Law Bar Association. In 2009 he was made a Bencher of Lincoln's Inn.
Judicial career
Singh was appointed a deputy High Court judge in 2003. Aged 39 when he was appointed, he was thought to be the youngest judge to sit in the High Court. In 2004 he became a Recorder (part-time judge) of the Crown Court. His appointment as a judge of the Queen's Bench Division of the High Court was announced on 29 July 2011. The appointment took effect on 3 October 2011, following the promotion of Mr Justice Kitchin to be a member of the Court of Appeal of England and Wales. He is the first Sikh to be made a High Court judge, and wears a turban rather than a wig while presiding. Singh was sworn in as a High Court Judge at Royal Courts of Justice on Monday 10 October 2011.
A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said of Singh's appointment:
The Government wants to create a society of aspiration, where people of ability feel free to aim to reach the highest offices of our country, regardless of their background, race or gender. The appointment of Mr Rabinder Singh QC, a talented and highly respected barrister, to the High Court, represents a real landmark in the drive to create a more diverse judiciary which continues to attract the highest quality candidates.
— Legal Week
From 2013 to 2016 he was a Presiding Judge of the South Eastern Circuit and in 2017 he was the Administrative Court Liaison Judge for Wales and the Midlands & Western Circuits.
In 2016, Singh joined the Investigatory Powers Tribunal, and he was appointed President on 27 September 2018.
He was appointed a Lord Justice of Appeal in July 2017, the appointment taking effect on 2 October 2017. He was sworn in on 5 October 2017. He is the first person from any BAME community to be a member of the Court of Appeal. As is customary for judges of the Court of Appeal he was appointed by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to the Privy Council.
Academic career
When Singh returned to England from California in 1986, he became a law lecturer at the University of Nottingham for 2 years. In the late 1990s Singh was a visiting fellow at Queen Mary University of London. Singh was a Visiting Professor of Law at the London School of Economics (LSE) from 2003 – 2009. In 2004 he was granted an honorary Doctorate of Laws by the London Metropolitan University. In 2007 Appointed Special Professor of Law, University of Nottingham. Singh delivered the annual LexisNexis Butterworths Lecture on Law and Society at Queen Mary University of London on 16 March 2011. The lecture, entitled 'The Changing Nature of the Judicial Process' examined what judges actually do in practice and how this has changed over the last 100 years. In 2016 he was elected as a Visiting Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
Public appointments and other positions
In 2000 Singh was appointed by then Foreign Secretary Robin Cook as 'Independent Monitor for Entry Clearance' between October 2000 and November 2002. The position was established in 1993 and requires a review of around 1000 randomly chosen entry clearance refusals without a right of appeal and looking at the overall quality of refusal decisions, paying particular attention to fairness, consistency and the procedures used to reach those decisions. He makes random checks on some 800-1,000 visa refusals a year to see whether decisions are consistent and fair, and makes an annual report to the Parliament of the United Kingdom suggesting any improvements he thinks necessary. Singh is the second person to hold the job – his predecessor was Dame Elizabeth Anson. Rabinder Singh QC was also an independent member on a three-strong panel commissioned in the wake of the race row which erupted on Big Brother UK 2007 where Jade Goody and fellow housemates were accused of racist bullying towards Indian actress Shilpa Shetty.
Notable cases (as counsel)
Representing the CND in 2002, when he unsuccessfully sought a declaration against the Prime Minister and others that it would be unlawful for Britain to go to war with Iraq without a fresh resolution from the U.N.'s Security Council.
The Belmarsh case in 2004 where Singh successfully represented Liberty in the House of Lords against the indefinite detention without charge or trial of non-nationals suspected of terrorist activities.
Successfully argued in the case of Ghaidan v Godin-Mendoza in 2004 that discrimination against same-sex partners in respect of inheriting the right to a rent-restricted flat was in violation of the Human Rights Act.
Successfully represented Liberty and the Joint Council for the Welfare of Immigrants in 2005 in the case against the government over the refusal of benefits to refugees.
Advising and representing the RSPCA in 2006 in their successful response to the claim that the Hunting Act 2004 contravenes the Human Rights Act or the European Convention on Human Rights.
In 2006 successfully represented the nine Afghan asylum seekers who hijacked a plane at gunpoint to get into Britain that they should have been allowed to remain in the country on human rights grounds.
In 2005, successfully represented the Al-Skeini family and other families of civilians killed during the British occupation of South East Iraq, arguing that the Human Rights Act applied extra-territorially.
Represented Peter Herbert, the Chair of the Society of Black Lawyers in the Disciplinary Proceedings brought against him by the Bar Council. Peter Herbert had accused the Bar Council of 'institutionalised racism'. The Bar Council eventually dropped the disciplinary proceedings against him.
Ahmed & Others v HM Treasury [2010] UKSC 2 (2010) Asset freezing orders pursuant to UN Security Council Resolutions. This case was also featured in the Channel 4 documentary 'Britain's Supreme Court', where Rabinder Singh QC can be seen giving oral argument before the United Kingdom Supreme Court.
Acting on behalf of the Government in Hirst v UK (2005) on prisoner voting; S and Marper v UK (2008) on retention of DNA samples; and Goodwin v UK (2002) on the rights of transgender persons.
Al-Skeini v UK (2011) on extra-territorial application of ECHR, representing families of civilians killed by British forces in Iraq.
One of his final appearances at the Bar was to represent the family of Baha Mousa at the public inquiry conducted by Sir William Gage, which reported in 2011.
Interests
Singh has an interest in Greek poetry. He was asked in an interview, "If you were to choose a profession other than law, what would it be and why?". He responded "One thing I would have liked to be is an academic specialising in Greek poetry. I love Greek poetry. I can read Ancient Greek but never had the chance to develop my interest." Singh is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts Singh has also expressed his views writing in The Guardian on how 'Asians should not be prejudged because of the way we look' following a personal experience on the London Underground following the 7 July 2005 London bombings.
Publications
JUSTICE/Tom Sargant Memorial Annual Lecture 2010: The UK Constitution: Time for Fundamental Reform?
Co-author of Beatson, Grosz, Hickman & Singh, Human Rights: Judicial Enforcement in the UK (2008)
Justiciability in the areas of foreign relations and defence: chapter in Shiner and Williams (eds), The Iraq War and International Law (2008)
The 2007 Statute Law Society Lecture: Interpreting Bills of Rights [2008] Statute Law Review 82
The 2005 MacDermott Lecture – The Use of Inter national Law in the Domestic Courts of the UK [2005] 56 NILQ 119
Equality – the Neglected Virtue [2004] EHRLR 141
Privacy Postponed? (2003) EHRLR Special Issue 12 (with J. Strachan)
The Right to Privacy in English Law [2002] EHRLR 129 (with J. Strachan)
Contributor, Privacy & the Media – the developing law (2002, Matrix)
The Declaration of Incompatibility [2002] Judicial Review 237
The Place of the HRA in a Democratic Society, in J. Jowell and J. Cooper (eds), Understanding Human Rights Principles (2001)
Is There a Role for the Margin of Appreciation after the Human Rights Act? [1999] EHRLR 15 (with M. Hunt and M. Demetriou)
Privacy & the Media after the Human Rights Act [1998] EHRLR 712
The Future of Human Rights in the United Kingdom: Essays on Law and Practice (1997, Hart Publishing)
Styles
Mr Rabinder Singh (1964–2002)
Mr Rabinder Singh QC (2002–2011)
The Honourable Mr Justice Singh / Sir Rabinder Singh (2011–2017)
The Right Honourable Lord Justice Singh / Sir Rabinder Singh (2017–present)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabinder_Singh_(judge)
Sadhana Sanjay Jadhav
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sadhana Sanjay Jadhav
Judge of the Bombay High Court
Assumed office
23 January 2012
Personal details
Born 14 June 1960
Sadhana Sanjay Jadhav (born 14 June 1960) is a judge of the Bombay High Court, in Maharashtra, India. She has been the judge in a number of notable cases concerning criminal offences, including the death of Sheena Bora, the Adarsh Housing Society scam, the trial of Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt in relation to the 1993 Bombay bombings, the case concerning the suicide of medical resident Payal Tadvi, and the case concerning the murder of writer Govind Pansare. Jadhav is also responsible for several legally significant interpretations of criminal law and procedure, concerning the right to appeal, and regarding penalties under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989.
Life
Jadhav was born in Solapur and was educated in Pune, attending Fergusson College and Pune University to obtain a bachelor's degree and master's degree in political science. She studied law at Symbiosis Law School in Pune, and initially practiced law at the Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court, before practicing in Mumbai.
Judicial career
Jadhav was appointed as an additional judge of the Bombay High Court on 23 January 2012, and continues to sit on the bench there.
In 2012, Jadhav along with Bombay High Court Judge Abhay Oka established the principle that accused persons did not have an inherent right to appeal against judicial orders, but could only do so when such right was granted by a statute. They also held that a legislature could take away the right to appeal in any set of cases.
In 2013, Jadhav, along with Justice Vijaya Tahilramani, were directed by the Bombay High Court to constitute a female-led bench to hear all appeals against acquittals for the offence of rape. This was following a decision from the Bombay High Court that all such acquittals would from 2013 onward, be heard by benches of female judges.
In 2016, Jadhav heard the case concerning the widely reported murder of Sheena Bora, and passed orders criticising the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) as well as the CBI Special Court that was trying the case, for procedural improprieties and delays. The case is still ongoing.
In 2016, Jadhav heard appeals filed by several members of the Sanatan Sanstha, a Hindu extremist group, in connection with the widely reported murder of writer Govind Pansare. Jadhav allowed the proceedings to be stayed, in order to allow the Maharashtra government's Criminal Investigation Department to investigate possible links to the murder of writers Narendra Dabholkar and M. M. Kalburgi. The case is still ongoing but has been transferred to a different judge
In 2017, Jadhav criticised the Maharashtra Government for ordering the early release of Bollywood actor Sanjay Dutt from jail, following his conviction for possession of arms, in relation to the 1993 Bombay bombings, and asked the government to justify it through court filings. The case was later transferred to a different judge of the Bombay High Court, who found no illegalities in his release.
In 2017, Jadhav and another judge, Ranjit More, quashed an order of the Governor of Maharashtra, Vidyasagar Rao granting sanction to prosecute former Maharashtra Chief Minister Ashok Chavan in connection with the politically significant Adarsh Housing Society scam. The order prevents Chavan from being tried in relation to the scam.
In 2017, Jadhav faced criticism following her remarks in a case concerning sexual abuse of a minor by the minor's adoptive father. Jadhav remarked, while granting bail to the accused, that minor victim was "inherently abnormal", "had a sexual instinct since childhood" and "was used to doing dirty things." The remarks were reported on and publicly criticized, and Jadhav later passed a second order, expunging her own remarks from the record, stating that they had been drawn from some documents submitted in evidence.
In 2017, Jadhav was also one of two judges to withdraw their membership from a housing project for official judges' residences, proposed by an association of judges, and approved by the Devendra Fadnavis-led BJP government in Maharashtra. The project had attracted controversy because it was proposed to be built on land that had been allocated for affordable public housing, and regulatory requirements of public notice had been waived in order to have the project approved by the Maharashtra Housing and Development Authority. The Bombay High Court is currently hearing a petition challenging the approval to this project.
In 2019, Jadhav rebuked prosecutors for delays in the case concerning the abetment of suicide of medical resident Payal Tadvi, following alleged harassment by colleagues, and directed them to investigate hospital authorities for failing to act to prevent harm. The case is still ongoing.
In 2019, Jadhav also established a new form of criminal procedure and penalty for offences committed under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act 1989. Although the act only contemplates arrest, trial, and compensation for offences, Jadhav, in two separate orders, prohibited the arrest of persons found guilty of arrest under the Act, and directed them to engage a series of 'reformative deeds' including the planting of 50 trees, instead.
S. Rajendra Babu
Former Chief Justice of India
DescriptionS. Rajendra Babu was the 34th chief Justice of India. He also served as the chairperson of National Human Rights Commission of India. Wikipedia
Previous office: Chief Justice of India (2004–2004)
Siri Jagan, Justice
Description of Practice
Justice Siri Jagan has been a leader in the mediation movement in Kerala having served as a Founding Member of the Kerala State Mediation and Conciliation Centre. He is the former President of the Board of Governors for the mediation program between 2013 and 2014. Under his leadership mediation centres were set up in all districts of Kerala.
Justice Siri Jagan practiced as an Advocate for nearly thirty years before being appointed as a Judge to the High Court of Kerala in 2006 where he served until 2014. Since retirement, Justice Siri Jagan has been appointed by the Supreme Court to head various Committees and Panels.
As a trained mediator, drawing from his vast legal and judicial experience, he helps parties realistically and comprehensively understand the pros and cons of litigation and take informed decisions to reach an amicable settlement. A gentle, yet firm personality, Justice Siri Jagan is able to put parties at ease and instil confidence in the effectiveness of the mediation process.
Degrees
BSc and LLB from Kerala University and LLM from Cochin University of Science and Technology
Areas of Practice
Commercial
Labor - Management
Tax
Workplace
Professional Services
Mediator
Justice S. Ashok Kumar
Justice S. Ashok Kumar was a notable Indian judge who served in the Madras High Court and the Andhra Pradesh High Court. His life and career were marked by significant judicial contributions but also by controversy surrounding his caste status and religious identity. Below is a comprehensive account of his background, career, and the controversies associated with him, based on available information.
Early Life and Background
- Birth and Family: S. Ashok Kumar was born on July 5, 1947, in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu, to parents who were Christian Dalits. His original name was S. Antony Samy.
- Religious Conversion: He claimed to have converted to Hinduism in 1971, changing his name to S. Ashok Kumar in 1974. This conversion was significant because it allowed him to claim Scheduled Caste (SC) status under the Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, which restricts SC benefits to Hindus, Sikhs, or Buddhists.
- Education: While specific details about his educational qualifications are not widely documented, he pursued a legal career, which suggests he completed a law degree and other necessary qualifications for judicial service.
Judicial Career
- Initial Appointment: In 1987, S. Ashok Kumar was directly recruited as a District Judge in Tamil Nadu under a post reserved for Hindu Scheduled Caste candidates. This appointment was facilitated by his claimed conversion to Hinduism and his SC status.
- Judicial Roles:
- He served as a District Judge in various courts in Tamil Nadu.
- He was later elevated to the Madras High Court as a judge.
- He also served as a judge in the Andhra Pradesh High Court.
- Tenure and Contributions: Justice Kumar served as a judge until his death in 2009. During his tenure, he handled a range of cases typical of High Court judges, though specific landmark judgments attributed to him are not widely detailed in available records. His career was notable for his rise from a reserved category background to a prominent judicial position.
Controversy Over Caste and Religious Identity
Justice S. Ashok Kumar’s career was overshadowed by a significant controversy regarding his caste status and religious identity, which came to light after his death in a 2022 Madras High Court case (W.P.No.33764 of 2019).
- Allegations of Misrepresentation:
- Kumar claimed Hindu SC status to secure his judicial appointment in 1987 and even contested a reserved SC assembly seat in 1987. However, it was alleged that he remained a practicing Christian, which would disqualify him from SC benefits under the 1950 Order.
- Evidence cited in the 2022 judgment included:
- His marriage to a Christian woman in a Christian ceremony.
- His children being raised as Christians and married in Christian ceremonies.
- His burial in a Christian cemetery in Tirunelveli in 2009, with a Christian epitaph on his tombstone.
- His family’s continued practice of Christianity, including his wife’s burial in a Christian cemetery.
- These factors led to accusations that Kumar misrepresented his religious identity to avail reservation benefits meant for Hindu SC candidates.
- Legal Scrutiny:
- The controversy arose in a case involving a petitioner challenging the validity of Kumar’s SC status, arguing that he had obtained his judicial post under false pretenses.
- The Madras High Court’s 2022 judgment noted that Kumar’s claim of conversion to Hinduism was questionable, as his lifestyle and family practices suggested he remained a Christian. The court emphasized that SC status is tied to both caste and religion under the 1950 Order, and Kumar’s actions appeared inconsistent with his claimed Hindu identity.
- However, since Kumar had passed away in 2009, no direct legal action could be taken against him, but the case highlighted issues of reservation misuse and the need for verification of caste and religious claims.
Personal Life
- Family: Kumar was married, and his wife was a Christian. He had children who were raised as Christians and married in Christian ceremonies, as noted in court records.
- Death: He passed away on October 29, 2009, and was buried in a Christian cemetery in Tirunelveli, Tamil Nadu. His burial, with a Christian epitaph, became a key point in the controversy over his religious identity.
Legacy and Impact
- Judicial Legacy: Justice S. Ashok Kumar’s contributions to the judiciary, particularly in the Madras and Andhra Pradesh High Courts, are part of his professional record. However, specific details of his judgments or legal philosophy are not widely documented in public sources.
- Controversy’s Broader Implications: The controversy surrounding his caste and religious identity sparked discussions on the integrity of reservation policies in India. It raised questions about the mechanisms for verifying caste and religious claims, especially for high-stakes positions like judicial appointments. The 2022 Madras High Court ruling underscored the importance of ensuring that reservation benefits are availed by eligible candidates.
Additional Context
- Caste and Reservation in India: The Scheduled Caste reservation system is designed to uplift historically disadvantaged communities. The Constitution (Scheduled Castes) Order, 1950, explicitly limits SC status to Hindus, Sikhs, and Buddhists (with some amendments over time). This makes religious identity a critical factor in determining eligibility, which was central to Kumar’s case.
- Lack of Public Records: Beyond the 2022 court case and some judicial records, detailed biographical information about Justice Kumar’s life, such as his education, specific judicial contributions, or personal writings, is sparse in publicly available sources. This limits the depth of insight into his career beyond the controversy.
T. Meena Kumari
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
T. Meena Kumari
Chief Justice of Meghalaya High Court
In office
23 March 2013 – 3 August 2013
Nominated by Collegium of Supreme Court of India
Appointed by President Pranab Mukherjee
Preceded by Office created
Succeeded by T. Nandakumar Singh
Personal details
Born 3 August 1951
Yalamanchili, Visakhapatnam district, Andhra Pradesh
T. Meena Kumari (born 3 August 1951) is a retired high court judge of India. She was the first Chief Justice of Meghalaya High Court. She previously served as the judge of Andhra Pradesh High Court and Patna High Court.
On her appointment as first Chief Justice of Meghalaya in 2013, she said her first priority would be to set up Fast-Track Courts in the state, as well as to understand the problems of the region and deal with pending cases. However, she was only in post for five months. After her retirement as Meghalaya Chief Justice in August 2013, she was appointed Chairperson of the Tamil Nadu State Human Rights Commission in December 2014. The post had been vacant since 2011.
Whilst serving as a judge in the Andhra Pradesh High Court, she involved in the case of T. Muralidhar Rao vs State of Andhra Pradesh 2010 as a member of the seven judge bench. The case dealt with religion-based reservations, specifically relating to reservations for backward class Muslims. While agreeing with the majority view, which struck down the quota, Justice T. Meena Kumari articulated a separate judgement.
She completed her law degree from Osmania University, Hyderabad, Andhra Pradesh. She is the granddaughter of late violinist Padmashree Venkateswamy Naidu
T. V. Ramakrishnan
From Wikipedia
T. V. Ramakrishnan
T. V. Ramakrishnan
Born
Tiruppattur Venkatachalamurti Ramakrishnan
14 August 1941
Madras, Tamil Nadu, India
Nationality Indian
Alma mater Banaras Hindu University (B.Sc.) (M.Sc.)
Known for Contributions to Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics and Statistical Mechanics
Awards
Trieste Science Prize (2005)
Padmashri (2001)
FRS (2000)
Scientific career
Fields
Institutions Banaras Hindu University
Doctoral students Venkat Pai
Tiruppattur Venkatachalamurti Ramakrishnan FRS (born 14 August 1941) is an Indian theoretical physicist known for his contributions in condensed matter physics. He is at present DAE Homi Bhabha Professor of Physics at Benaras Hindu University and also the chancellor of Tripura University.
Biography
Tiruppattur Venkatachalamurti Ramakrishnan was born on 14 August 1941 in Madras, Tamil Nadu. He completed his B.Sc (Hons.) and M.Sc in Physics from Banaras Hindu University in 1959 and 1961. He then worked as a CSIR research fellow at Banaras Hindu University from 1961 to 1962. He later completed his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1966. He started his professional career as lecturer in the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur. He shifted to the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore in 1986 where he continued till 2003.
Ramakrishnan has made seminal contributions to the scaling theory of electron localization. He has made contributions to the theory of liquid to solid transition and of mixed valence systems.
Awards and honours
He was awarded the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award in 1983, TWAS Prize in 1990[3] and the Padma Shri in 2001. In 1987 he was elected a Fellow of the American Physical Society "for his contributions to the many-body theory of disordered systems, especially the scaling theory of localization and the theory of mixed-valent impurities"
Ramakrishnan was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 2000. His certificate of election reads:
Professor Ramakrishnan has made crucial contributions to our understanding of condensed many body systems. His pioneering work started two major areas of activity. These are: the liquid-solid transition as well as related phenomena in dense classical systems, and the onset of electron localization in disordered systems. He has also made many significant contributions to their growth. In a third area, namely mixed valence in rare-earth metals, his work on the inverse orbital degeneracy expansion has had a major effect on the field
Udayabhanu K.R. , Justice
GENERAL'Smoking out families like rats is too indecent for a government'; Justice Udayabhanu criticizes eviction of flat residents
KR Udayabhanu has lashed out against the state government over its decision to evict the residents from the controversial flats in Maradu .In a Facebook post, he added that the disconnection of electricity and water is a violation of human rights
His Facebook post read, 'Disconnecting water & electricity in the darkness is a human rights violation and smoking out families like rats is too indecent for a government to perform Even at the risk of sending the Chief Secretary to jail, the government ought to have resisted or sought time to make alternative arrangements .The builders ought to have been pressurised to provide alternative abodes. I feel that such strong actions on the part of government would have saved the Maradu victims, and SC would have relented
VISHWAS KASHINATHRAO JADHAV
B.Com., LL.B.
Shri Vishwas Kashinathrao Jadhav was born on 17.5.1960 at Beed, District Beed. His father and mother both were Freedom fighters. After completing school education, he completed his graduation in Commerce faculty from Balbhim College, Beed. He was a student of M.P. Law College, Aurangabad and obtained degree in law (LL.B.). He joined the legal profession in the year 1982, practiced on both Civil and Criminal sides in the District and Sessions Court at Beed, for 18 years.
He was selected as an Additional District Judge and appointed on the said post at Osmanabad on 6.10.2000 and worked as such till 31.12.2003. He was the Registrar at Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court from 01.01.2004 to 16.5.2006. Thereafter he worked as District Judge-3 from 17.5.2006 to 11.6.2006 and District Judge-4 from 12.6.2006 to 2.6.2007 in the District and Sessions Court at Aurangabad. Thereafter, he worked as Member Secretary of Maharashtra State Legal Services Authority (MALSA), Bombay from 4.6.2007 to 29.2.2008. He was posted as Principal District Judge at Osmanabad from 5.3.2008 to 10.2.2009. He also worked as Registrar (Inspection) at Bombay High Court from 11.2.2009 to 5.6.2010. Thereafter, he was posted as Principal District Judge at Jalna from 7.06.2010 to 12.6.2012. He has also worked as Charity Commissioner of Maharashtra State from 18.6.2012 to 2.3.2014.
He is elevated as Additional Judge of Bombay High Court on 03.03.2014.
Y. S. Tambe
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Justice Yashwant Shripad Tambe B.A., LL.B. (born 31 July 1904, date of death unknown) become Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court on 5 February 1966 and served until 31 July 1966. He was the first 'Nagpur Judge to become the Chief Justice of Bombay. He was born at Amravati and educated at Indore, Government Law College Bombay. He practised at the Bar at Nagpur from 1930 through 1934. He became Judge of Nagpur High Court on 8 February 1954 and moved to Mumbai in 1966 as Chief Justice after Hashmatrai Khubchand Chainani.
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