Ashok Desai
Ashok H. Desai (18 December 1932 – 13 April 2020) was an Indian lawyer, practising in the Supreme Court of India. He held office as the Attorney General of India from 9 July 1996 to 6 May 1998. Earlier, he was the Solicitor General of India from 18 December 1989 to 2 December 1990. He was awarded the Padma Bhushan[1] award and the Law Luminary Award in 2001. He was given an honorary doctorate in "recognition of his contribution to the field of law and jurisprudence" by the North Orissa University in September 2009.
Education
After finishing his schooling in Bombay, he studied at the Fergusson College in Pune and thereafter at the Government Law College, Bombay. He graduated with a law degree in 1952. He thereafter joined the London School of Economics. In the summer of 1955, he was one of the first students from Great Britain to be invited on a study visit to China. In 1956, he graduated from the London University with a BSc in economics. The same year, he was called to the Bar from Lincoln's Inn, London. He was part of the Harvard International Seminar in 1967.[citation needed]
Career
Desai started practice in Bombay High Court in 1956. He was designated as a Senior Advocate on 8 August 1977. As an Advocate he appeared in a large number of cases in the Bombay High Court and the Supreme Court particularly those involving issues of accountability in public life & transparency in Governance. Some of the cases of general interest include:-
(a) Sakharam Binder[2] which struck down the pre censorship of dramatic performances. The play "Sakharam Binder" as being censored by the police on the ground of obscenity. Justice Kania (later on the Chief Justice of India) saw the play at a special audition. He set aside the police decision and also struck down the relevant provisions of the Act as unguided and unconstitutional The trial itself became the subject matter of books and other plays.[3]
(b) Piloo Modi[4] This case been discussed by Professor Gyan Prakash in his book " Mumbai Fables"[5] under the heading " The State On Trial And The City Of Conspiracy[6] ". where the allotment of Backbay land reclamation was set aside. The case advanced the proposition that land belonging to the State must be treated as being held in public trust and must realize a fair price."By lowering the standing threshold, articulating a quasi-trustee standard for the exercise of all government power, and fashioning a resolution that was prospective and ameliorative, Backbay anticipated the robust administrative law and public interest litigation (PIL) jurisprudence developed by the Supreme Court in later years.[7]"
(c) Antulay[8] in which cement was distributed by the Chief Minister to builders who happened to give donations to Indira Gandhi Pratishtan. Justice Lentin found that there was quid pro quo and held that the administration was accountable even when it extracted donations for a public trust. The Chief Minister had to resign his office promptly.
He was Legal Correspondent for Times of India from 1963 to 1969. Mr. Desai was Professor of Law in Law College, Bombay from 1964 and Lecturer in Law in Bombay College of Journalism from 1967 to 1972.
Desai moved from Bombay to New Delhi in 1989, when he was appointed Solicitor General of India by then Prime Minister V.P. Singh. After December 1990 after resigning as Solicitor General of India, he continued practising in Delhi. He was appointed Attorney General for India on 9 July 1996 by Prime Minister H.D. Devegowda and continued to hold office under Prime Minister I.K. Gujral till he resigned as on 6 May 1998.
Some of the cases of general interest in Supreme Court include the case of –
(a) Ramanna Shetty[9] on the obligation of the State to act fairly. The case dealt with a tender for a food stall in the Bombay Airport where despite the conditions of eligibility a non-eligible person was given the allotment. Justice Bhagwati's extended Article 14 as dealing not only with equality as such but also arbitrariness on the ground that arbitrariness was anathema to equality. "Applying principles of administrative law given the expansion of State’s functions, the Court took upon itself the role of stepping in "to structure and restrict the power of executive government so as to prevent its arbitrary application or exercise[10] "
(b) Narasimha Rao[11] about Parliamentary privilege. The case involved critical parliamentary votes on a motion of ‘no confidence’ which were being obtained by payment of money. The Supreme Court accepted the submission that Member of Parliament would be a public servant and would be subject to the Prevention of Corruption Act. By a narrow majority the Court held that a Member of Parliament had immunity regarding any scrutiny of the reason as to why he cast a vote in a given way and a court could not hold an inquiry into whether he received any bribe to induce him to vote in a given manner;
(c) Vineet Narain[12] about powers of a Court to monitor investigation against political leaders. The Court passed a detailed order after considering the report of Independent Review Committee regarding working of the Central Investigation Agency and Central Vigilance Commission and gave mandatory directions regarding implementing the same. One distinct contribution of the Bench was to evolve the concept of "continuing mandamus" so that a Court could oversee whether its orders were being carried out;
(d) Narmada Dam[13] considered the grievance of those affected by the rising construction of the dam. There were two distinct issues, viz. whether the dam should be built at all and whether there should be relief and rehabilitation of displaced persons. The court resolved the issues by permitting the construction of the dam in stages commensurate at each level with relief and rehabilitation;
(e) Amrendra Singh[14] was on legislative privilege where the court held that while the House had an undoubted right to expel a member for conduct unbecoming member of the House the privilege could not be exercised in relation to an activity that had no bearing on his legislative functions;
(f) Nandini Sunder[15] considered the grievance of the tribal population who were caught in the cross fire between extremist Naxalites and vigilante groups supported by the State. The Court gave extensive reliefs including of ordering investigation. It held "that the appointing of tribal youth with little education as Special Police Officers engaged in counter- insurgency activities is violative of Article 14 and Article 21[16] "
Desai was the Chairman of the Committee on Administrative Law of International Bar Association in 1986-88 and Consultant to the Commonwealth Workshop on Administrative Law at Lusaka, Zambia in 1990. In 1997, he presented India's Report to the United Nations Committee on Human Rights[17] in Geneva. In 1997 he represented India at W.T.O. Appellate Body in a Patent litigation filed by United States against India.[18] In 1998, he led the Indian delegation to the United Nations Preparatory Committee on Money Laundering Bill in Vienna.[19]
Desai was the Vice President of the Bar Association of India and President of the Inns of Court (India) Society.
Death
Desai died on 13 April 2020.[20] Quite a few good obituaries have appeared in media.[21][22][23][24][25]
Publications
- Contributed to "Constitutional Laws of India" – Published for Arnold-Heinemann Publishers( India) Ltd.(1986)
- " The Law Shall Prevail: A Relook at the Indian Legal System", Union Internationale Des Avocats, India Chapter, 43rd Congress New- Delhi,3-7 November 1999
- Contributed to "Democracy, Human Rights and the Rule of Law" – Published by Butterworths India (2000);
- Co- Edited and Contributed to " Supreme Court not infallible- Essays in Honour of the Supreme Court of India"; Oxford University Press (2000). Ashok H. Desai and S. Muralidhar; " Public interest Litigation: Potential and Problems";
- The Bombay High Court-"on the High Court as a Constitutional Court"; Eminence Designs (2004);
- Contributed to " Evoking H.M. Seervai Jurist and Authority on the Indian Constitution"; Universal Law Publishing (2005)
- "Judicial Overreach: A critique"; ( 2013) 9 SCC ( Jour) 1
- "1975-1977 Emergency.Some legal recollections."; published Legacy of Law- Bar Association Bombay and (2017) 2 SCC ( Jour) 31
- Contributed a Chapter "Judicial Craftsmanship of Justice Bhagwati: to "Law, Justice & Judicial Power - Justice P N Bhagwati's Approach" edited by Prof. (Dr.) Mool Chand Sharma
Awards
- Golden Anniversary Rotary Prize, University of London, (1956)
- National Law Day award( 2000);
- Padma Bhushan (2001);[1]
- Capital Foundation National Awards (2014)
- Supreme Court of India award "in recognition of his contribution to the development of Constitutional Law of India" (2016)
- Lawyers of India Day Award-conferred by the Bar Association of India for his " outstanding contribution to the development of the legal profession in india".(2016)
- Conferred "Lifetime Achievement Award" in Legal Era Awards (2018–19)
Interviews, speeches and lectures
- Law Day Speech 1996; (1997) 2 SCC ( Jour) 10.
- 10th Prem Bhatia Memorial Lecture on Dangers to Indian Democracy( 2005)[26]
- Interview on " The Constitution is evolving Constantly";Halsbury Law Monthly, Oct 2008
- Interview by meLAWnge, Annual Magazine 2013-2014
- Justice K. T. Desai Memorial Lecture on "Judicial Overreach: A critique", 2013
References
- ^ a b " Padma Awards" (PDF). Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India, 2015. Retrieved 21 July 2015.
- ^ 77 (1975) BomLR 13. The delicate question of censoring plays in Maharashtra was curiously governed by the Bombay Police Act. The Police took the view that the tender morality of the Bombay audience could not withstand a play about illicit sexual relations.
- ^ After passing through the legal fire the play suddenly caught on and had the unique distinction of being performed in four languages, namely, Marathi, Gujarati, Hindi and English at the same time in the same city. The play became a popular paperbook and also led to a Marathi book by Sarang Kamlakar called "Binderche Divas". It again found a place later on the stage as a part of the theme of a Marathi play "Sex, Morality and Sakharam Binder".
- ^ Piloo Mody Vs. State, Unreported.
- ^ Prakash. Gyan; "Mumbai Fables"; HarperCollins Publishers India;2010
- ^ Prakash. Gyan; "Mumbai Fables";HarperCollins Publishers India;2010, ages 278-288
- ^ Divan Shyam; "Public Interest Litigation"; The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution; Oxford University Press 2016 page 663
- ^ AIR 1981 Bom 422, also see 1984 (2) SCC 183 and 1988 (2 )SCC 764
- ^ Ramana Shetty Vs. International Airport Authority of India, ( 1979) 3 SCC 489.
- ^ Varottil Umakanth "Government Contracts"; The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution; Oxford University Press 2016 page 977
- ^ P.V. Narasimha Rao v. State (CBI/SPE),1998 (4) SCC 626.
- ^ [1] Vineet Narain Vs. Union Of India, ( 1998) 1 SCC 226.
- ^ Narmada Bachao Andolan Vs. Union of India, (2000) 10 SCC 664
- ^ Amarinder Singh Vs. Special Committee, Punjab Vidhan Sabha, 2010 (6) SCC 113
- ^ Nandini Sunder Vs. State of Chhattisgarh, 2011(7) SCC 547
- ^ Jalan Prateek and Rai Ritin; " Review of Administrative Action"; The Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution; Oxford University Press 2016 page 445
- ^ Human Rights Committee, Concluding Observations (1977) CCPR/C/79/ADD.81,
- ^ WTO Dispute Settlement: One- page Summaries 1995-2014, India- Patents (US) (DS50)
- ^ ( PDF) http://www.jslaw.com.PublicationsFiles[permanent dead link].
- ^ Senior Advocate And Former Attorney General For India Ashok Desai Passes Away
- ^ Ashok Desai a Renaissance person par excellence
- ^ Ashok Desai I Knew
- ^ Professor, Journalist and Lawyer - Padma Bhushan Ashok Desai was a lion of the Bar
- ^ In memory of Ashok Desai
- ^ A Tribute to my Sat Guru, Ashok Desai
- ^ "The State of the Nation". 11 August 1996.
- v
- t
- e
- V. K. Aatre
- Anil Agarwal
- Ram Narain Agarwal
- Sharan Rani Backliwal
- Swami Kalyandev
- Veerendra Heggade
- Pavaguda V. Indiresan
- Wahiduddin Khan
- B. B. Lal
- Raghunath Anant Mashelkar
- H. Y. Sharada Prasad
- Rajinikanth
- Begum Aizaz Rasul
- Radha Reddy
- Raja Reddy
- Pakkiriswamy Chandra Sekharan
- Karamshi Jethabhai Somaiya
- S. Srinivasan
- Ratan Tata
- Harbans Singh Wasir
- Dev Anand
- Viswanathan Anand
- Amitabh Bachchan
- Rahul Bajaj
- B. R. Barwale
- Balasaheb Bharde
- Boyi Bhimanna
- Swadesh Chatterjee
- B. R. Chopra
- Ashok Desai
- K. M. George
- Bhupen Hazarika
- Lalgudi Jayaraman
- Yamini Krishnamurthy
- Shiv K. Kumar
- Raghunath Mohapatra
- Arun Netravali
- Mohan Singh Oberoi
- Rajendra K. Pachauri
- Abdul Karim Parekh
- Amrita Patel
- Pran
- Aroon Purie
- B. V. Raju
- P. Bhanumathi
- Sundaram Ramakrishnan
- Chitranjan Singh Ranawat
- Palle Rama Rao
- Raj Reddy
- Uma Sharma
- L. Subramaniam
- Naresh Trehan
- Gary Ackerman
- H. P. S. Ahluwalia
- Prabha Atre
- Sushantha Kumar Bhattacharyya
- Chandu Borde
- Eugene Chelyshev
- Pravinchandra Varjivan Gandhi
- Shobha Gurtu
- Henning Holck-Larsen
- Zakir Hussain
- B. K. S. Iyengar
- F. C. Kohli
- V. C. Kulandaiswamy
- Gury Marchuk
- Jagat Singh Mehta
- Ismail Merchant
- Mario Miranda
- Frank Pallone
- Ramanujam Varatharaja Perumal
- Natesan Rangabashyam
- Maharaja Krishna Rasgotra
- Habib Tanvir
- K. K. Venugopal
- Nirmal Verma
- K. J. Yesudas
- Teejan Bai
- Ammannur Madhava Chakyar
- Prabhu Chawla
- Herbert Fischer
- Jamshyd Godrej
- Coluthur Gopalan
- K. Parasaran
- B. Rajam Iyer
- Shri Krishna Joshi
- Madurai Narayanan Krishnan
- Rajinder Kumar
- Ramesh Kumar
- Purshotam Lal
- Sitakant Mahapatra
- Bagicha Singh Minhas
- Subhash Mukhopadhyay
- P. S. Narayanaswamy
- Arcot Ramachandran
- Trichur V. Ramachandran
- Kantilal Hastimal Sancheti
- T. V. Sankaranarayanan
- Naseeruddin Shah
- T. V. R. Shenoy
- Jagjit Singh
- Ram Badan Singh
- Hari Shankar Singhania
- Umayalpuram K. Sivaraman
- Narayanan Srinivasan
- Padma Subrahmanyam
- Swapna Sundari
- O. V. Vijayan
- Herbert Alexandrovich Yefremov
- Thoppil Varghese Antony
- Soumitra Chatterjee
- Chandrashekhar Shankar Dharmadhikari
- Gulzar
- Sardara Singh Johl
- M. V. Kamath
- Komal Kothari
- Yoshirō Mori
- Gopi Chand Narang
- Govindarajan Padmanaban
- Poornima Arvind Pakvasa
- Vishnu Prabhakar
- N. Rajam
- C. H. Hanumantha Rao
- Thiruvengadam Lakshman Sankar
- T. N. Seshagopalan
- Bijoy Nandan Shahi
- Krishna Srinivas
- Alarmel Valli
- Sardar Anjum
- André Beteille
- Chandi Prasad Bhatt
- Tumkur Ramaiya Satishchandran
- Mrinal Datta Chaudhuri
- Yash Chopra
- Manna Dey
- Irfan Habib
- Yusuf Hamied
- Qurratulain Hyder
- Tarlochan Singh Kler
- Anil Kohli
- Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
- Mrinal Miri
- Hari Mohan
- Brijmohan Lall Munjal
- M. T. Vasudevan Nair
- Azim Premji
- Balraj Puri
- Syed Mir Qasim
- A. Ramachandran
- G. V. Iyer Ramakrishna
- V. S. Ramamurthy
- K. I. Varaprasad Reddy
- K. Srinath Reddy
- Girish Chandra Saxena
- Narasimaiah Seshagiri
- Mark Tully
- Jaiveer Agarwal
- P. S. Appu
- Shashi Bhushan
- Ganga Prasad Birla
- Grigory Bongard-Levin
- Lokesh Chandra
- Chiranjeevi
- Dinesh Nandini Dalmia
- Tarun Das
- Madhav Gadgil
- A. K. Hangal
- Devaki Jain
- Kamleshwar
- Abdul Halim Jaffer Khan
- Sabri Khan
- Ghulam Mustafa Khan
- Shanno Khurana
- Gunter Kruger
- P. Leela
- K. P. P. Nambiar
- Nandan Nilekani
- Sai Paranjpye
- Deepak Parekh
- M. V. Pylee
- Subramaniam Ramadorai
- N. S. Ramaswamy
- Pavani Parameswara Rao
- Ramakanta Rath
- V. Shanta
- Hira Lall Sibal
- Billy Arjan Singh
- Jasjit Singh
- Vijaypat Singhania
- K. G. Subramanyan
- K. K. Talwar
- Vijay Shankar Vyas
- Dušan Zbavitel
- Javed Akhtar
- Gabriel Chiramel
- Ela Gandhi
- Saroj Ghose
- V. Mohini Giri
- Somnath Hore
- Jamshed Jiji Irani
- Gurcharan Singh Kalkat
- N. Mahalingam
- Prithipal Singh Maini
- Tyeb Mehta
- Rajan and Sajan Mishra
- Rajan and Sajan Mishra
- Sunil Mittal
- Ramankutty Nair
- Gopaldas Neeraj
- Indra Nooyi
- Kavalam Narayana Panicker
- Bhikhu Parekh
- Syed Mohammad Sharfuddin Quadri
- V. S. Ramachandran
- Tapan Raychaudhuri
- S. H. Raza
- Jeffrey Sachs
- Chandra Prasad Saikia
- L. Z. Sailo
- Shiv Kumar Sarin
- Shriram Sharma
- Manju Sharma
- T. N. Srinivasan
- Osamu Suzuki
- K. T. Thomas
- Mian Bashir Ahmed
- Kaushik Basu
- Shayama Chona
- Jagjit Singh Chopra
- Rahim Fahimuddin Dagar
- Chandrashekhar Dasgupta
- Asis Datta
- Meghnad Desai
- Padma Desai
- Sukh Dev
- Nirmal Kumar Ganguly
- B. N. Goswamy
- Vasant Gowarikar
- Baba Kalyani
- K. V. Kamath
- Inderjit Kaur Barthakur
- Ravindra Kelekar
- Asad Ali Khan
- Dominique Lapierre
- D. R. Mehta
- Shiv Nadar
- Suresh Kumar Neotia
- T. K. Oommen
- K. Padmanabhaiah
- Vikram Pandit
- V. Ramachandran
- Sushil Kumar Saxena
- Amarnath Sehgal
- Jasdev Singh
- Shrilal Shukla
- P. Susheela
- S. R. Srinivasa Varadhan
- Yuli Vorontsov
- Sunita Williams
- Ji Xianlin
- Isher Judge Ahluwalia
- Inderjit Kaur Barthakur
- Shamshad Begum
- Abhinav Bindra
- Shanta Dhananjayan
- V. P. Dhananjayan
- Ramachandra Guha
- Shekhar Gupta
- Khalid Hameed
- Minoru Hara
- Jayakanthan
- Thomas Kailath
- Sarvagya Singh Katiyar
- G. Krishna
- R. C. Mehta
- A. Sreedhara Menon
- S. K. Misra
- A. M. Naik
- Satish Nambiar
- Kunwar Narayan
- Nagnath Naikwadi
- Kirit Parikh
- Sam Pitroda
- C. K. Prahalad
- Gurdip Singh Randhawa
- Brijendra Kumar Rao
- Bhakta B. Rath
- C. S. Seshadri
- V. Ganapati Sthapati
- Devendra Triguna
- Sarojini Varadappan
- 1954–1959
- 1960–1969
- 1970–1979
- 1980–1989
- 1990–1999
- 2000–2009
- 2010–2019
- 2020–2029