INDU Malhotra Is First Woman Lawyer Appointed As Supreme Court Judge
Indu Malhotra, who specialises in arbitration, has been appointed as a Judge of the Supreme Court of India..She will be the first woman lawyer to be directly appointed as a judge of the country’s highest judiciary after The Union Ministry for Law headed by Ravi Shankar Prasad has Okayed the recommendation sent by the Supreme Court’s Collegium chaired by Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra. But the Ministry is yet to approve elevation of the Uttarakhand Chief Justice KM Joseph to the Supreme Court of India. Indu Malhotra, who was born in Bengaluru on March 14, 1956, will demit office when she is 65 .SC Judges can be office till the age 65.The senior counsel practising in the Supreme Court of India for the past 30 years, she was the second woman to be designated Senior Advocate by the Supreme Court in 2007. She has authored the third edition of a commentary The Law and Practice of Arbitration and Conciliation, 2014, which was released in April 2014. She has specialised in the law of arbitration, and has appeared in various domestic and international commercial arbitrations. In December 2016, she has been made member of the High Level Committee (HLC) in the Ministry of Law and Justice by the Government of India to review Institutionalization of Arbitration Mechanism in India. Of the top court’s 24 judges, only one is a woman, Justice R Banumathi from Kerala. She was elevated to the top court in August 2014. Justice Banumathi was the sixth woman to become a Supreme Court judge. Justice Fathima Beevi from Kerala was the first in 1989.The government has meanwhile denied the allegation made by The Congress party that its reluctance to process the file for the Uttarakhand Chief Justice is linked to his verdict that cancelled President’s rule in Uttarakhand in 2016 and allowed the Harish Rawat to retain power despite losing majority support in the State Assembly. A month after this verdict, Justice Joseph was recommended to be transferred to the High Court of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana at Hyderabad but the centre held back its approval. Informed sources say that the law ministry felt that the Collegium did not go by the seniority of judges in recommending Justice KM Joseph. Justice KM Joseph,58, is ranked 42nd the All India seniority list of judges and there were 11 other Chief Justices of high courts ahead of him awaiting to be to be elevated to the country’s topmost court. Before his appointment as Chief Justice of the High Court of Uttarakhand on 31 July 2014, he had served as a Judge of Kerala High Court for more than 9 years.
