Ajit Nath Ray

Ajit Nath Ray (1912 to 2009) was the fourteenth Chief Justice of India, serving from April 1973 to January 1977. Educated at Presidency College in Calcutta and Oriel College, Oxford, he was called to the English bar in 1939 and served as a judge of the Calcutta High Court, where he was the lone dissenter in the 1969 bank nationalization case. His appointment as Chief Justice superseded three more senior judges and proved controversial, and his tenure is remembered for the ADM Jabalpur v. Shiv Kant Shukla ruling that fundamental rights could be suspended during a state of emergency, a decision later overturned.