Kailas Nath Wanchoo: Former Chief Justice of India

He was raised by Kashmiri Pandit parents and received his elementary education in Nowgong, Madhya Pradesh. For his middle school education, he attended Pandit Pirthi Nath High School in Kanpur, Muir Central College in Allahabad, and Wadham College in Oxford. On December 1st, 1926, he enlisted in the Indian Civil Service in Uttar Pradesh as a Joint Magistrate. Wanchoo was the first judge in his family, having been born in Mandsaur (in modern-day Madhya Pradesh) on February 25th, 1903. He went to the UK to finish his two-year training in 1924 after clearing the ICS tests. The majority of Wanchoo J's early legal expertise came from the criminal law lessons he learned during his ICS training sessions; he was not educated as a lawyer.

Professional Details

When Wanchoo J returned to India in 1926 from UK. Initially, he was assigned as an Assistant Magistrate and Collector in the United Provinces (or what are now Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand). Over the following ten years, he advanced through the ranks, and by 1937, he had been confirmed as a Sessions and District Judge in the United Provinces. He became an acting judge in the Allahabad High Court in 1947. Wanchoo J began by stepping in for a coworker from the ICS who was on leave; ten months later, he was given a permanent position.

Wanchoo J was appointed as the Part B Rajasthan High Court's Chief Justice on January 2, 1951. On November 1st, 1956, with the reorganization of states, he was appointed Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court. He held this position up until August 11th, 1958, when he was appointed as a Supreme Court judge.

Ten years later, on April 24, 1967, Wanchoo J was named Chief Justice when K. Subba Rao CJI abruptly resigned on April 11, 1967, to contest for President of India. Only ten months would pass before he left the position and retired on February 24th, 1968.

Wanchoo J wrote 355 decisions during his tenure at the Supreme Court and sat on 1,286 benches. In 326 judgments, he has been mentioned.

Additional Reading

Wanchoo J was involved in various committees important to the creation of the contemporary Indian State during the post-independence era.

He presided over the commission for judicial reforms for the former United Provinces from 1950 to 1951.

The Telangana movement called for the creation of a separate state from the former state of Madras; this was the inspiration for the current Andhra Pradesh. In January 1953, former Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru requested Wanchoo J to lead a commission looking into the effects of establishing this new jurisdiction after acknowledging the movement. When Wanchoo was appointed Chief Justice of the Part B Rajasthan High Court, there were questions over whether judges of the High Court should be assigned cases that had little to do with their histories.

After the Indore police opened fire on protesting students in 1954, Wanchoo J served as the one-man Inquiry Commission's chairman. He served as the Chairman of the Dholpur Succession Case Commission in 1955, which was tasked with looking into a Rajasthani property issue. Wanchoo J was one of two High Court judges named to the first post-independence Law Commission by September of the same year.

Wanchoo J was chosen by the Ministry of Railways to serve as Chairman of the Railway Accidents Inquiry Committee after his retirement from the SC. He served in this position from April 3rd, 1968, until August 31st, 1969. He also served as the Ministry of Labour's Chairman of the Board of Arbitration between 1968 to 1975. Served as chair of a committee in 1970 that looked into ways to protect Telangana residents working for the government in Andhra Pradesh. While serving as the Chairman of the Direct Taxes Inquiry Committee in 1970–1971, Wanchoo J looked into tax fraud and other types of money laundering. Wanchoo J once more served as the sole member of an inquiry commission between 1974 and 1975 to look into claims of corruption against West Bengali politicians.

Fact	Detail
Name	Kailas Nath Wanchoo
Date of Birth	25 February 1903
Official Tenure	12 April 1967- 24 February 1968
President	Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan
Preceded by	K. Subba Rao
Succeeded by	M. Hidayatullah
As Judge	10 Chief Justice of India Chief justice of Bombay high court

Major Judgements

It includes:

I.C. Golaknath V. State of Punjab (1967)

In I.C. Golaknath v. State of Punjab, Justice Wanchoo voiced a strong dissent (1967). The Court determined in Golaknath that Parliament lacked the authority to change Part III of the Constitution, which outlines the Fundamental Rights. Chief Justice Subba Rao introduced the "doctrine of prospective overruling" to the Court's jurisprudence with this judgment. In his dissenting opinion, Wanchoo J emphasized that the Constitution can be amended in its entirety and that the idea of future overruling is inapplicable. Later, in Kesavananda Bharati v. State of Kerala, Golaknath was reversed (1970).

General Manager, Southern Railways v Rangachari, (1961)

The Court maintained the legitimacy of reservations in promotions under Article 16(4A) of the Constitution in General Manager, Southern Railways v. Rangachari. In his dissent, Justice Wanchoo emphasized that the equality of opportunity promised to people by Article 16 cannot be negated by discrimination in promotions. Wanchoo J also brought out the prospect that misgivings would result in poor governance in his dissension.

FAQs

Q1. Who had appointed Justice Kailas Nath Wanchoo as the Chief Justice of India?

Ans. Former President of India Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan appointed justice Kailas Nath Wanchoo as the Chief Justice of India on 12 April 1967 and he served until his retirement i.e. on 24 February 1968.

Q2. Who was the only chief justice of India never earned a law degree?

Ans. The 10th Chief Justice of India, Justice Kailas Nath Wanchoo, had never held a law degree. He joined the Indian Civil Service as Joint Magistrate on 1 December 1926 in Uttar Pradesh. In 1947, he was appointed as a judge of the Allahabad High Court, and in 1951, as the Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court. In 1958, he was appointed as a judge of the Supreme Court, and finally, on April 12, 1967, he was appointed as the Chief Justice of India.