By Ila Ananya
It’s true, we’re glad that Justice Indira Banerjee has been appointed as the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court. Before this, she’d been a judge in the Delhi High Court, and before that even, Banerjee had been a permanent judge in the Calcutta High Court.
And while it’s great to be overjoyed that a woman has been appointed as the Chief Justice and we do recognise it as a step forward, we can’t help but shake off the unsettling feeling that comes with knowing that only four major high courts have had women chief justices. In India’s history.
In February this year, for instance, we’d expected the Supreme Court Collegium to recommend more women in our courts. Of course that didn’t happen, because of course they went with men instead. Never mind that since its establishment in 1950 until 1980, there were NO women judges. Since then until now, we’ve had six, and that’s a low 2.6 percent. Also, neither the Supreme Court nor any of the High Courts have any kind of data on the number of women applicants that’s publicly available. According to Live Law, the latest data available shows that only 10.86 percent of judges are women in the higher judiciary—which means that of the 652 judges in 24 high courts, 69 of them are women. Eight high courts don’t have a single woman judge.
We have seen how having women in any kind of managerial role in companies tend to help companies in the long run. The same thing is true of courts. So why isn’t there more talk about these terrible numbers being a reflection of the issues within the Indian legal system?
So while we are happy to hear that a Justice Indira Banerjee has been appointed as the Chief Justice of the Madras High Court, we must also say that before we start rejoicing and reporting this as a powerful step forward, we need to remember that four chief justices in high courts since India’s history is a terribly low number.