Indu Malhotra will be one of only seven women judges that the apex court has had so far since independence. Indu is a senior counsel practising in the Supreme Court for the past 30 years.
NEW DELHI: The Supreme Court collegium has recommended senior advocate Indu Malhotra and Uttarakhand chief justice KM Joseph be made judges of the country’s top court.
At a meeting on January 10, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra and his four senior-most colleagues also promoted six judges as chief justices of high courts, including the one for Delhi Indu Malhotra, who specialises in arbitration, will be the first woman lawyer to be directly appointed to the Supreme Court.
Justice Joseph, who was on the bench that in 2016 quashed the imposition of President’s Rule in Uttarakhand, has been awaiting transfer to Andhra Pradesh for almost a year.
Indu Malhotra would be only the seventh woman judge in the Supreme Court’s 68-year-old history Justice M. Fathima Beevi was the first woman Supreme Court judge, appointed 39 years after the apex court was established in 1950. At present, Justice R Banumathi is the lone woman judge in the apex court.
The second woman judge was Justice Sujata V. Manohar, who was appointed in 1994 for a five-year tenure in the Supreme Court. The other five women judges are Justices Ruma Pal, Gyan Sudha Misra, Ranjana Prakash Desai.
The apex court currently has six judicial vacancies even as seven more judges, including Chief Justice Dipak Misra, are scheduled to retire in the course of 2018.
