About this stamp
The Third Chief Justice
India Post issued this ₹5 stamp on 31 December 2017 for Justice Mehr Chand Mahajan (1889–1967), the third Chief Justice of India, fifty years after his death. He was born in 1889 at Tika Nagrota in the Kangra district of Himachal Pradesh, son of Lala Brij Lal, an advocate of Dharamsala. He graduated from Government College, Lahore in 1910, took his LL.B. from Punjab University in 1912, practised at Dharamsala and Gurdaspur and became a leading advocate of the Lahore High Court and president of its Bar Association (1938–43). He was made a judge of the Punjab High Court in 1943.
Partition and Kashmir
As a Congress member of the Radcliffe Commission in 1947 he persuaded Lord Mountbatten to award Gurdaspur to India, which made a road and rail link to Jammu and Kashmir possible. In September 1947 he became Prime Minister of Jammu and Kashmir and helped persuade Maharaja Hari Singh to accede to India.
The Supreme Court
He became a judge of the Federal Court on 1 October 1948, and so of the Supreme Court when the Constitution came into force, and took office as Chief Justice of India on 4 January 1954.
The stamp was designed by Sankha Samanta; Security Printing Press, Hyderabad printed 604,500.
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