Senior advocate and former law minister Shanti Bhushan passed away, he was 97 years old. On Tuesday, he breathed his last at his residence in Delhi. Former Law Minister Shanti Bhushan was the father of advocate Prashant Bhushan.
New Delhi: Eminent lawyer and former Law Minister Shanti Bhushan passed away. He was 97 years old. He breathed his last at seven o’clock on Tuesday evening at his residence in Delhi. Prime Minister Narendra Modi has condoled his death. The PM tweeted, ‘Shanti Bhushan ji will be remembered for his contribution in the legal field and his passion for speaking up for the underprivileged. Saddened by his demise. Condolences to his family. peace.’
Shanti Bhushan was the lawyer who represented Rajnarayan in the famous case in the Allahabad High Court, which resulted in the removal of Indira Gandhi as Prime Minister in 1974. He took up many issues of public interest and was a vocal activist against corruption. He served as the Law Minister of India from 1977 to 1979 in the Morarji Desai ministry.
In 1980, he founded the renowned NGO ‘Centre for Public Interest Litigation’, which has filed several important public interest litigations in the Supreme Court. In 2018, he filed a petition in the Supreme Court demanding a change in the ‘Master of Roster’ system. His son is the famous advocate-activist advocate Prashant Bhushan.
Shanti Bhushan was a member of the Congress and later of the Janata Party, and was also a Rajya Sabha MP during his political career. He also had a six-year tenure with the BJP. He was one of the founding members of the Aam Aadmi Party in 2012 along with his son Prashant Bhushan. His association with the party ended later.
In 2018, he had moved the Supreme Court challenging the roster practice of allocation of cases to the apex court by the Chief Justice of India. In his petition, Bhushan had argued that ‘the Master of the Roster cannot be an unbridled and unbridled discretionary power to arbitrarily allocate cases to select judges’. The apex court later ruled that the CJI is the ‘master of the roster’ and has the authority to allocate cases to different benches of the apex court.
