He was a member of the Indian Administrative Service (IAS), held the constitutional position of Comptroller & Auditor General of India, was an elected member of the Indian Parliament, and was appointed by the President of India to the constitutional office of Governor of Karnataka and Kerala.

Triloki Nath Chaturvedi was born in the village of Tirwa, in the Kannauj area of Uttar Pradesh on January 18, 1928.

He stood First Class throughout in MA, and was presented the University Gold Medal for Economics and Political Science.

In 1950, Triloki Nath Chaturvedi was inducted into the first batch of the IAS after the commencement of the Constitution of India.

He was then attached to the Rajasthan cadre of the IAS, and served there in various capacities, such as private secretary to the chief minister of Rajasthan, collector and district magistrate of Ajmer, and secretary in the departments of Industries, Mines, Town Planning, and Tourism.

He met scholars and administrators such as Henry Kissinger, George F Kennan, and John Kenneth Galbraith.

Some of his illustrious trainees during this period were Gopal Gandhi, Wajahat Habibullah and Aruna Roy.

During his tenure, among his achievements was the construction of quarters for the employees of Chandigarh Administration, thus fulfilling a long-standing demand.

During this period he was made a member of a three-man committee to review the working of the Indian Institute of Advanced Study, Shimla.

TN Chaturvedi recruited new staff, and encouraged the implementation of academic programs which served as mid-career refresher courses for administrators.

As home secretary, he dealt with numerous issues of national importance, such as the insurgencies in Kashmir and Punjab, and the students’ movement against infiltrators in Assam.

He was deemed retired from the IAS upon his appointment as Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG, 1984–90).

The traditionally low-key profile of the CAG was suddenly raised as these reports were brought into the public realm by media.

The institution of the CAG, and Chaturvedi personally, came under attack inside and outside Parliament by the government and the Congress Party in 1989 after the release of an audit report of the purchase of the Swedish Bofors gun by the army, which pointed out lapses in the procurement process.

He was also a member of the Committees on external affairs, defence, public accounts, money laundering, patents, and on the securities scam.

TN Chaturvedi was appointed Governor of Karnataka by President APJ Abdul Kalam in August 2002.

His editorials in Sahitya Amrit evoked great interest, with readers sending letters praising them, or asking further questions on the issues discussed.

After his death, his family donated them to the Prime Ministers’ Museum and Library, where an annual lecture in his memory is also held.

He was a familiar and loved figure to stray dogs in his neighbourhood, and they adopted him, taking him for long walks and ensuring that he remembered to give them biscuits.

He was described by the distinguished jurist Fali Nariman as one of the finest civil servants that independent India had seen.