Ajit Ray - A Lifestory

Someone is remembered as a very important person in the story of the Indian courts. His time, which ended with him becoming the main judge of the highest court in India in 1973, had big things happen that people still talk and think about now. He started his job at a hard time, just two years after the Indo Pakistani War of 1971 and when things were getting tense politically, which would later cause the Emergency in 1975. The choice to make him the main judge was itself argued about, because he was picked over three judges who had been there longer: J.M. Shelat, K.S. Hegde, and A.N. Grover. This choice made people wonder if the courts were truly free and separate from the government. Some law experts said that this action, like something from a movie about politics, put the usual rules of who gets picked based on how long they've been there and the court's freedom at risk. Even though people argued about him being picked, Justice Ray led over many important court cases while he was in charge. His rulings and how he understood the law had a long lasting effect on Indian law. While some of his choices, especially those made during the Emergency, were criticized, his help in making India's laws can't be denied. As someone who worked with him supposedly said, "Justice Ray had a special way of looking at things in court, always trying to support the constitution as he saw it." He stopped working in 1977, leaving behind a mixed story that people in the law world still look at and talk about today.