K. N. Choksy
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The Honourable K. N. Choksy PC MP |
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|---|---|
 |
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| Minister of Finance of Sri Lanka | |
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In office 12 December 2001 – 6 April 2004 |
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| President | Chandrika Kumaratunga |
| Prime Minister | Ranil Wickremesinghe |
| Preceded by | Chandrika Kumaratunga |
| Succeeded by | Sarath Amunugama |
| Minister of Constitutional & State Affairs | |
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In office 1992 – 19 August 1994 |
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| President |
Dingiri Banda Wijetunga Ranasinghe Premadasa |
| Prime Minister |
Ranil Wickremesinghe Dingiri Banda Wijetunga |
| National List Member of Parliament | |
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In office 1989–2010 |
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| Personal details | |
| Born |
7 February 1933 Colombo, British Ceylon |
| Died | 5 February 2015 (aged 81) Colombo, Sri Lanka |
| Nationality | Sri Lankan |
| Political party | United National Party |
| Other political affiliations |
United National Front |
| Spouse(s) | Freny Choksy (nee Cooper) |
| Children | Jamsheed, Khursheed, Vishtasp |
| Profession | Lawyer |
Kairshasp Nariman Choksy, PC, MP (7 February 1933 – 5 February 2015) (known as K. N. Choksy) was a Sri Lankan lawyer, politician and a former member of the Parliament of Sri Lanka. He was Cabinet Minister of Finance under Prime Minister Ranil Wickremasinghe. He had also served as Cabinet Minister of Constitutional & State Affairs from 1993 to 1994 under President D. B. Wijetunga and was a member of parliament from 1989 to 2010 continuiosly.
Kairshasp N. Choksy belongs to the small, yet well established and respected, Parsi community of Sri Lanka, of which he is currently the Anjuman chairman. He was born in Colombo on 7 February 1933. His paternal grandparents had migrated to Colombo from Surat, North of Bombay, in the year 1885 to manage an established business house in the Coconut oil industry at Colombo, belonging to a Bombay Parsi family.
His maternal grandparents were also settled in Colombo, in the export-import trade in food-commodities. They donated the building and land called "Navroze Baug", which is the religious centre of the Colombo Parsi residents.
Kairshasp's father, Nariman K. Choksy, was born in Sri Lanka around the start of the 20th century. He was the first Parsi Advocate in the country. Establishing a lucrative practice on the civil side, he was bestowed the honour by the then British Government of being appointed a Queen's Counsel in 1947, and later served as a Judge of the country's Supreme Court from 1951. With the enactment of Sri Lanka's Citizenship Laws after the Country's independence in 1948, Nariman Choksy found himself (and a few other well established settlers of Indian origin) as becoming "stateless". Upon this being brought to the notice of the incumbent Government, a law was enacted by Parliament in 1950 under which Nariman Choksy qualified for citizenship as a "Distinguished Citizen" of the Country.
Choksy received his primary education at S. Thomas' Preparatory School, Kollupitiya, being one of the first students to be admitted to the school at its founding in 1938. He then continued his secondary education at S. Thomas' College Mount Lavinia. From boyhood, he imbued the legal atmosphere in his father's Law Chambers and being called to the Sri Lankan Bar as an Advocate in 1958 rapidly established himself in a leading practice in the civil courts of the metropolis of Colombo. Choksy was appointed as President's Counsel in 1981. He appeared as lead-Counsel on one side or the other in many a civil Cause-celebre.
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