While he is best known for his judgment in the 2G spectrum case in the Supreme Court, Justice A K Ganguly, who is now embroiled in a sexual harassment complaint by a law intern, delivered several important judgments during his stint as the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court.
Ganguly’s tenure at Chennai as Chief Justice was quite brief - between May and December 2008 - before he was elevated to the Supreme Court. But his association with Tamil Nadu goes back to his days as a senior lawyer.
In 2002, he was engaged to argue the State’s case before the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal in place of former Attorney General K Parasaran. In fact, the change of lawyer was an issue that was hotly debated in the Tamil Nadu Assembly in April 2002.
As Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, Ganguly is most remembered for his landmark judgment banning manual scavenging in the State.
The verdict, now widely quoted in human rights cases, deemed manual scavenging a violation of fundamental rights.
Ganguly also held office during the infamous students’ clash in the Dr Ambedkar Law College here in November 2008. In the aftermath of that incident, a bench headed by him passed an order recommending wide-ranging reforms to legal education in the State and also banned political and caste-based programmes at the college.
Also, acting on a PIL, Justice Ganguly issued orders with a seven-point guidelines for the conduct of public meetings in Chennai in June 2008.
Such meetings had become a nuisance then, resulting in traffic congestion and hardship to residents who had to endure blaring loudspeakers late into the night. Other important orders of Justice Ganguly included his intervention in the attempts made to pull down the historic Gokhale Hall and orders against rampant stone quarrying in the hills of Ooty.