K S HEGDE

Justice Hegde is possibly only the second judge — after Justice Islam — to have been an MP before being appointed a judge. His career is again similar to Justice Islam’s in that he eventually returned to politics and became an MP again. Incidentally, Justice Hegde’s son — former Karnataka Lokayukta Justice Santosh N Hegde — is also a former judge of the Supreme Court.

Justice Hegde was a Congress Rajya Sabha MP from 1952 to 1957. In 1957, he resigned after his appointment as a judge of the Mysore High Court (now Karnataka HC), from where he went on to become the first chief justice of the Delhi and Himachal Pradesh High Court. In 1967, he was elevated as a judge of the Supreme Court of India, a post he held till April 30, 1973, when he resigned to protest against the appointment of a judge junior to him as CJI by the Indira Gandhi government.

He then re-entered politics, contesting and winning from Bangalore South constituency in the 1977 election on a Janata Party ticket. Within a few months, on July 21, 1977, after the resignation of then Speaker Neelam Sanjiva Reddy to contest the presidential poll, Hegde was unanimously elected speaker of the Lok Sabha, the first time a first-time Lok Sabha MP was elected to the post.