The SC collegium has cleared nine names, including the name of justice BV Nagarathna from Karnataka HC, who could become the country’s first woman CJI in 2027
India may get its first woman Chief Justice of India (CJI) in 2027.
The Supreme Court collegium on Tuesday cleared nine names for appointments in the top court, including the name of justice BV Nagarathna from the Karnataka high court (HC), who, if elevated now, could become the country’s first woman CJI in 2027.
According to the people familiar with the development, the other names cleared by the collegium include two more women judges and one direct appointment from the Supreme Court bar.
Apart from justice Nagarathna, the other two women judges picked by the five-member collegium are justice Hima Kohli, who is the chief justice of Telangana HC, and justice Bela Trivedi, who is a judge in the Gujarat HC.
Senior advocate PS Narasimha is the collegium’s choice for direct appointment to the bench. Narasimha’s recommendation comes less than a week after the retirement of justice Rohinton F Nariman, who happened to be only the fifth lawyer in India’s legal history to be directly appointed from the bar.
Those in the know of the development told HT that the other names finalised by the collegium include justices Abhay Shreeniwas Oka (chief justice of Karnataka HC), Vikram Nath (chief justice of Gujarat HC), Jitendra Kumar Maheshwari (chief justice of Sikkim HC), CT Ravikumar (judge in Kerala HC) and MM Sundresh (judge in Kerala HC).
Three out of these nine judges can become the CJI during their tenure at the apex court, including justice Nagarathna who could be the CJI in 2027 for little over a month.
The collegium in the Supreme Court comprised CJI NV Ramana, and justices Uday U Lalit, AM Khanwilkar, Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud and L Nageswara Rao.
It was the first collegium in the last 21 months when the five most senior judges could arrive at a consensus in forwarding names to the Union government for appointments in the top court.
Since the retirement of Justice Ranjan Gogoi as the CJI in November 2019, the collegium had not sent a single recommendation to the Union government for appointments in the top court, which currently has nine vacancies after justice Nariman’s exit on August 12.
Additionally, Justice Navin Sinha is set to retire on August 18, which will leave the Supreme Court with 10 vacancies out of 34. Out of these 10 vacancies, nine names have now been zeroed in by the collegium.
As reported by HT on February 21, the impasse in the collegium, according to the people familiar with the development, persisted due to justice Nariman’s firm stand over recommending justice Akil A Kureshi, currently chief justice of the Tripura high court, as a judge in the apex court.
Justice Nariman had asserted that any recommendation to be made by the collegium of the five most senior judges must include justice Kureshi, who stood at number 2 in all-India seniority list of high court judges. A lack of consensus within the collegium stalled appointment of judges in the top court ever since.
The previous CJI SA Bobde’s 17-month tenure turned out to be the only one in judicial history when a CJI demitted office without making any recommendation for the Supreme Court after the advent of the collegium system in 1990s.
Both justices Bobde and Nariman had, however, at different platform had said that it is time for the country to have its first woman CJI.
The Supreme Court currently has only one woman judge, justice Indira Banerjee, who is set to retire in September 2022. There have only been eight women judges appointed in the Supreme Court till date.
The recommendations will be sent to the Union law ministry that has the option of sending the recommendations back to the collegium for review, but if the collegium resubmits them, it has to approve the names.
