Dr. T. K. Viswanathan
Dr. T. K. Viswanathan is a legal luminary who was awarded the Padma Shri by the President of India in 2017. He has held various positions in academia, the Government of India, and the Lok Sabha.
During the four decades of his career, he has served as a lawyer, a Professor of Jurisprudence, Secretary to the Government of India in the Ministry of Law & Justice, and Secretary General of the Lok Sabha. He has drafted many landmark legislations over the past two decades, and the Government has immensely benefitted from his expertise in legislative drafting and in parliamentary and constitutional matters.
The Information Technology Act 2000, which laid the basis for cyber law in India, the Competition Act 2002, and the Right to Information Act 2005 are three important landmark legislations worth mentioning which have laid the foundation for a new jurisprudence in the Indian legal framework. As Chairman of the Bankruptcy Law Reforms Committee 2014, he was responsible for drafting the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code 2016, which is the most important economic reform next only to GST since independence.