Who is Justice (retd) Khanwilkar, the new chairperson of Lokpal?

Former Supreme Court judge A M Khanwilkar appointed new Lokpal chairperson

The central government, on February 27, notified the appointment of Justice (Retd) Abhay Manikrao Khanwilkar of the Supreme Court as the new chairperson of the anti-corruption ombudsman Lokpal.

The ombudsman will now have a chairperson, nearly two years after the post fell vacant. Other judicial members appointed to the Lokpal include retired justices Lingappa Narayana Swamy, Sanjay Yadav, and Ritu Raj Awasthi. Sushil Chandra, Pankaj Kumar, and Ajay Tirkey have been appointed as non-judicial members.

Khanwilkar, who retired from the Supreme Court in July 2022, has now been given a government position one and a half years after he retired. Moneycontrol takes a look at Khanwilkar’s profile and some of the important judgments he authored during his six-year tenure in the Supreme Court.

Brief profile

Born in Pune on July 30, 1957, Khawilkar obtained a bachelor's degree in commerce from Mulund College of Commerce in Mumbai. He then pursued a degree in law from K.C. Law College in Mumbai, after which he enrolled as an advocate in 1982. Though Khanwilkar began his practice in Mumbai, he shifted to Delhi at a very early stage in his career. He specialised in the civil, criminal, and constitutional sides of the law.

Khanwilkar was appointed a judge of the Bombay High Court in 2000, close to 18 years after he started his career as a lawyer. After serving as a judge of the Bombay High Court for nearly 13 years, he was appointed Chief Justice of the High Court of Himachal Pradesh in April 2013. Thereafter, he was appointed Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court in November 2013 before being elevated to the Supreme Court in May 2016.

In the Supreme Court, Khanwilkar was a member of the collegium for over a year. When he retired in 2016, he was the third-most senior judge of the court.

Notable judgments

Khanwilkar was a member of the Constitution Bench in 2018, which held that a person had the right to die with dignity and that it was a fundamental right under the Constitution. According to the judgment, the right allows the patient to refuse medical treatment, causing pain and suffering in the case of a terminal illness and hastening the process of dying.

In April 2022, he authored a judgment that upheld the validity of the Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Amendment Act, of 2020. The judgment upheld the amendment, stating that it would allow the central government to monitor transactions more carefully to maintain the sovereignty of the nation.

Later that year, Khanwilkar authored a judgment dismissing a plea by Zakia Jafri, the wife of Gujarat Congress MP Ehsan Jafri, against a clean chit given to the then Chief Minister of the state Narendra Modi by a Supreme Court-constituted Special Investigation Team (SIT). The judgment also observed that the issue has been kept alive by persons with ulterior motives. This observation led to the arrest of social activist Teesta Setalvad, who was granted bail by the top court in June 2023.

A week before his retirement, Khanwilkar authored a judgment upholding various amendments to the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), 2002. The judgment dealt with the powers of the Enforcement Directorate (ED) and the conditions that a person might have to fulfil to obtain bail in a PMLA case. The judgment is currently under review.