H. L. Dattu

Hon'ble Justice Handyala Lakshminarayanaswamy Dattu
42nd Chief Justice of India
Incumbent
Assumed office 28 September 2014
Appointed by	Pranab Mukherjee (President of India)
Preceded by	Rajendra Mal Lodha
Judge, Supreme Court of India
Incumbent
Assumed office 17 December 2008
Judge, High Court of Karnataka
In office 18 December 1995 – 12 February 2007
Chief Justice of Chhattisgarh High Court
In office 12 February 2007 – 18 May 2007
Chief Justice of Kerala High Court
In office 18 May 2007 – 17 December 2008
Personal details
Born	(1950-12-03) 3 December 1950 Chikkapattanagere village, Chikmagalur, Mysore State, India

Handyala Lakshminarayanaswamy Dattu (born 3 December 1950) is the Chief Justice of India .^[1] Before his elevation as a judge of the Supreme Court of India on 17 December 2008, he had served as the Chief Justice of Kerala High Court and Chhattisgarh High Court.^{[2][3] [4][5]}

Early life and education

Dattu was born in Chikkapattanagere village in Chikmagalur district of Mysore State (now Karnataka). His father H L Narayanaswamy was an English teacher. He completed his early education in Kadur, Tarikere and Birur, before moving to Bangalore where he completed his LL.B..^[6][7]

Career as a lawyer

Dattu was enrolled as an advocate at the bar on 23 October 1975. He practised at Bangalore 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.^[2][3]

As a judge

Dattu was appointed a judge of the Karnataka High Court on 18 December 1995. Thereafter, on 12 February 2007, he was elevated as Chief Justice of Chhattisgarh High Court. On 18 May 2007, he was transferred to head the Kerala High Court.^[2] On 5 September 2014, the President of India had appointed Dattu as the next Chief Justice of India, on the recommendation of CJI R. M. Lodha. On 28 September 2014, he sworn in as the 42nd Chief Justice of India.^[8] He would have tenure more than one year till 2 December 2015. He will hold the post for a little over a year until his retirement on December 2, 2015-one of the longest tenures for a CJI in recent years.^[2][3]

In February 2014, Dattu was nominated by then CJI P Sathasivam as the CJI's nominee to the five-membered panel to appoint the Lokpal.^[9] He is the visitor of Hidayatullah National Law University, Raipur^[10]

Personality

Dattu is known for his penchant for hard work and has few outings with his family and friends. He describes former CJI S. Rajendra Babu as his guru. He has also contributed in the field of social work under organizations like the Rotary Club. He is a fervent devotee of Tirupati Balaji and Lord Ganesha and a connoisseur of Carnatic music.^[2] He is known for his hard work and is considered as a disciplinarian. ^[6] He is known for his humanistic approach towards justice system. On a noted incident, he gave justice to an old woman who appealed against a bank which denied job for her grand daughter due to passing the deadline for applying. He ruled out this deadline and asked the bank to consider it as a special case on the grounds that the old woman was uneducated, she can hardly understand the regulations and also considering the helplessness of the grand old woman. While he was Chief Justice of Chattisgarh High court in 2007, he gave a decision justifying the permanent job status for all temporary contract jobs employees working in the High Court of Chattisgarh.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to H. L. Dattu.

• Welcome CJI Dattu: 16-hour-workday judge who knows ‘common man’, sworn in for giant 14-month term

References

Chief Justices of India H. J. Kania M. Patanjali Sastri Mehr Chand Mahajan Bijan Kumar Mukherjea Sudhi Ranjan Das Bhuvaneshwar Prasad Sinha P. B. Gajendragadkar Amal Kumar Sarkar Koka Subba Rao Kailas Nath Wanchoo Mohammad Hidayatullah Jayantilal Chhotalal Shah Sarv Mittra Sikri Ajit Nath Ray Mirza Hameedullah Beg Yeshwant Vishnu Chandrachud Prafullachandra Natwarlal Bhagwati Raghunandan Swarup Pathak Engalaguppe Seetharamiah Venkataramiah Sabyasachi Mukharji Ranganath Misra Kamal Narain Singh Madhukar Hiralal Kania Lalit Mohan Sharma Manepalli Narayana Rao Venkatachaliah Aziz Mushabber Ahmadi Jagdish Sharan Verma Madan Mohan Punchhi Adarsh Sein Anand Sam Piroj Bharucha Bhupinder Nath Kirpal Gopal Ballav Pattanaik V. N. Khare S. Rajendra Babu Ramesh Chandra Lahoti Yogesh Kumar Sabharwal K. G. Balakrishnan S. H. Kapadia Altamas Kabir P. Sathasivam Rajendra Mal Lodha H. L. Dattu (Incumbent)