Ajit Nath Ray

Ajit Nath Ray (29 January 1912 – 25 December 2009) was the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of India from 25 April 1973 till his retirement on 28 January 1977.

Ray was the lone dissenter among the eleven Supreme Court judges that examined the constitutionality of the Bank Nationalization Act, in 1969. He had come to his appointment to the Supreme Court via Presidency College, Calcutta, Oriel College, Oxford, Gray's Inn, and the Calcutta High Court. His son Justice Ajoy Nath Ray became a Chief Justice of the Allahabad High Court.

Early life and career Justice Ray was born on 29 January 1912. He was called to English Bar in 1939 and enrolled as advocate in Calcutta High Court on 1 March 1940. He was appointed as Judge in Calcutta High Court on 23 December 1957.

Chief Justice of India In August 1969, he was appointed as Judge of the Supreme Court of India, and became Chief Justice of India in April 1973.

Ajit Ray's appointment as CJI came on the heels of a dissenting opinion in the Kesavananda Bharati case which gave rise to the Basic structure doctrine of the Indian Constitution.

This appointment superseded three senior judges of the Supreme Court, Jaishanker Manilal Shelat, Amar Nath Grover and K. S. Hegde, and was viewed as an attack on the independence of the Judiciary. This was unprecedented in Indian legal history, and has been called the "blackest day in Indian democracy". It was marked by widespread protests by bar associations and legal groups across India. The protests continued for many months and on 3 May 1976 all legal groups in India observed a "Bar solidarity day" and stopped from work.

Ultimately, the powers of the Judiciary over judicial appointments was re-established under the Morarji Desai government with Shanti Bhushan as law minister through various Constitutional amendments.

Additional District Magistrate of Jabalpur v. Shiv Kant Shukla (also known as the Habeas corpus case) was a major decision during his tenure as Chief Justice, where the Supreme Court espoused the view that no court could enforce the right to life during the imposition of Emergency. This meant that even if life were taken illegally during an Emergency, the court would stay helpless. After the Emergency was over, the 44th Amendment Act of 1978 protected the fundamental rights under Article 20 and Article 21 from being violated during an Emergency. The IR Coelho v. State of Tamil Nadu case was a landmark 2007 Supreme Court of India ruling that established the importance of judicial review and the basic structure doctrine of the Constitution. Finally, in 2017's KS Puttaswamy v. Union of India case, the Supreme Court overruled the Habeas Corpus case's majority decision.