RANGANATH MISRA

Justice Misra, who died recently, had a few firsts to his credit. He was the first chairman of the National Human Rights Commission of India when it was set up in 1993. He was also the first former CJI to join a political party — the Congress — to contest a Rajya Sabha election (1998), which he won. The move raised some controversy. After the end of his Rajya Sabha term in 2004, he was appointed chairman of the National Commission for Religious and Linguistic Minorities, where he submitted a report in 2007 recommending a 15 per cent quota for minorities at national level. As a Supreme Court judge, he had headed the much-criticised one-man inquiry commission that probed the anti-Sikh riots following Indira Gandhi’s assassination in 1984.