Daijiworld Media Network - Bengaluru (MS)

Bengaluru, Oct 30: Former Lokayukta and retired judge of Supreme Court justice Nanje Gowda Venkatachala (90) died on the morning of Wednesday, October 30 due to age-related illness.

N Venkatachala was known for his daring approach in work. Corrupt people, including bureaucrats and politicians were scared of his honesty and iron fist in bringing them to book. 

On July 1, 1992, he was sworn in as Judge of the Supreme Court of India which he remained until July 2, 1995.

He was sworn in as the Lokayukta on 2 July 2001. He is said to have put the fear of god in the Karnataka administration. Number of complaints the office of Lokayukta was receiving dramatically increased from 20-25 per day to 200-250 per day while Venkatachala was in tenure. He personally led hundreds of raids often lashing out at corruption in political life. In his four and a half years in office, he had looked into more than 50,000 cases of misconduct and complaints from members of the public.

He even drew lot of criticism often from politicians who accused him of tarnishing all politicians with the same brush. He was discontinued as Lokayukta for the second term because of legal hurdles although a huge campaign was done in favor of him.