The recommendation for a woman lawyer to directly be appointed a Supreme Court judge is a first. We look at why the recent recommendation of Senior Advocate Indu Malhotra for the judgeship is significant and also take a look at women advocates who have earned a name for themselves over the years in the Indian legal system.
In a historic first of sorts, senior advocate Indu Malhotra has been recommended for direct appointment as a Supreme Court judge by the court collegium led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra. If the recommendation is cleared by the central government, Malhotra will become India’s first woman lawyer to be appointed directly to the judgeship of the top court.
The Indian Supreme Court’s history of appointing women judges has been rather poor. The SC has had only six women judges in its history. Right now there is only one woman among the 25 SC judges – Justice R Bhanumati. Of the High Court judges across the country, less than 15% are women.
An eminent jurist, she was responsible for many firsts: in 1977, she was the first woman to be designated Senior Advocate in Supreme Court. Leila Seth was also the first woman judge of the Delhi High Court and later became the first woman Chief Justice of an Indian High Court. She was a part of the Justice Verma Committee that resulted in overhauling India’s rape law and was also instrumental in changing the Hindu Succession act to give women equal rights to the joint family property.
Indira Jaisingh is a noted human rights lawyer and senior advocate in the Supreme Court and has fought for and contributed significantly to bringing about changes in matters relating to women's rights. She has also fought for the environment, pavement dwellers, extrajudicial killings and disappearances. In the past, she also challenged the procedure for the appointment of Senior Advocates in the SC.
An expert in property, divorce and marital law, this Mumbai High Court lawyer has frequently taken up causes relating to gender, women's issues, domestic violence and feminist jurisprudence. She co-founded Majlis, an organisation that provides legal representation to over 50,000 women in matters of child custody, marital rights and more.
She is not only a lawyer but also an activist for woman's rights, survivors of sexual violence and for sexual minorities. She was worked to get justice for victims of communal massacres, extrajudicial killings, trade unions, political activists and so on. Vrinda Grover has the distinction of having been listed in Time magazine’s 100 most influential people in the world in 2013.
She is a lawyer specialising in commercial, constitutional and media law and is a feminist intellectual. She was listed as one of Corporate India’s Fastest Rising Women's Leaders by the Economic Times jury. She has worked extensively in matters relating to sexual harassment, anti rape laws, and has also worked for the victims of the Bhopal Gas leak incident and for online speech rights.
Her mother was a freedom fighter and she was the first graduate in her family. A lawyer and women's right activist, she is also on the board of several companies. She was the first woman to be elected as Chairman of the Bar Association of the Karnataka Bar Council.
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