H. L. Dattu

Handyala Lakshminarayanaswamy Dattu (born 3 December 1950) is a former Chief Justice of India, and former chairman of the National Human Rights Commission. As the chief justice, he served for nearly 14 months, from 28 September 2014 to 2 December 2015. Before his elevation as a judge of the Supreme Court of India on 17 December 2008, he had served as the Chief Justice of the Kerala High Court and Chhattisgarh High Court.

Early life and education Dattu was born in Chikkapattanagere village in Chikmagalur district of Mysore State (present-day Karnataka). His father H L Narayanaswamy was an English teacher. He completed his early education in Kadur, Tarikere, and Birur, before moving to Bengaluru where he completed his Bachelor of Laws.

Career As a lawyer Dattu was enrolled as an advocate at the bar on 23 October 1975. He practised at Bengaluru in civil, criminal, constitutional, and taxation matters. He appeared as government counsel in the Karnataka High court for the sales tax department from 1983 to 1990, government advocate from 1990 to 1993, standing counsel for the income tax department from 1992 to 1993, and a senior standing counsel for the Income Tax department from 1993 to 1995. He held the post for a little over a year until his retirement on 2 December 2015, on turning 65 years of age – one of the longer tenures for a CJI in recent years.

In February 2014, Dattu was nominated by then CJI P Sathasivam as the CJI's nominee to the five-member panel to appoint the Lokpal. He is a visitor of Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur.

In February 2016, Dattu began serving as the chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission of India and where he served till 2 December 2020.

Dattu was also involved in controversy after he asked for the names of whistleblowers to be revealed in the 2G spectrum case.