Before Justice Nazeer, who were the other former SC judges appointed Governors?

Before Justice Nazeer, at least two other retired Supreme Court judges have been appointed Governors of states in recent years, former Chief Justice of India Justice P Sathasivam, and former Justice M Fathima Beevi.

Justice Sathasivam (retd)

The last instance of a Supreme Court judge being appointed as a Governor was the appointment of former Chief Justice of India (CJI) P Sathasivam, as the Governor of Kerala in 2014.

Enrolled as an Advocate in 1973 at Madras, he practised in all types of Writ, civil and criminal matters, company petitions, insolvency petitions and Habeas Corpus petitions. According to his Supreme Court profile, he worked as Government Advocate, Additional Government Pleader, Special Government Pleader in the Madras High Court, and as Legal Adviser for several State-owned Transport Corporations, Municipalities, Nationalized Banks etc.

Appointed as a permanent Judge of the Madras High Court on January 8, 1996, he was transferred to the Punjab & Haryana High Court in April 2007. He was elevated to the Supreme Court in August 2007 and was the CJI from July 2013 to April 2014. Under the NDA government in 2014, he was appointed as Kerala Governor by then President Pranab Mukherjee.

Justice Fatima Beevi (retd)

Former Supreme Court judge Justice M Fatima Beevi was the Governor of Tamil Nadu from 1997 to 2001, after her retirement as a Supreme Court judge in 1992.

She was India’s first woman Justice at the Supreme Court. Enrolled as Advocate in 1950, she was appointed as Munsiff in the Kerala Sub-ordinate Judicial Services in May 1958. Following elevations to sub-ordinate and district levels, she became a permanent Judge of the Kerala High Court in 1984. After her elevation to the Supreme Court as a Judge in 1989, she retired in 1992.

She took charge at the Raj Bhavan in Chennai on January 25, 1997, when H D Deve Gowda was Prime Minister.

Governor Fathima Beevi resigned on July 1, 2001, before the completion of her five-year tenure, following controversy over her decision to invite J Jayalalitha to form the government in May of that year, and the friction with the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government after the dramatic midnight arrests — on June 29-30, 2001 — of the then 78-year-old DMK president and former Chief Minister M Karunanidhi and his senior colleagues Murasoli Maran and T R Baalu, by the Jayalalithaa government.

The DMK was part of the Vajpayee government at the Centre at the time. Police broke into the room of the sleeping Karunanidhi and dragged him away. Maran was the Minister for Commerce and Industry, and Baalu was the Minister for Environment and Forests at the time. Following the arrests, then Union Law Minister Arun Jaitley told senior journalist Sheela Bhatt that his “initial impression appears to be that personal agenda is being given preference over the rule of the law”.