With the recent appointment of four more women judges, the Madras High Court made history on Friday: it now has 11 women judges. This is the highest number of women judges that the High Court has had in its 125-year history.
The appointment of four women judges to the High Court was approved by the President earlier this week. The women judges appointed as additional judges to the High Court are S. Ramathilagam, R. Tharani, R. Hemalatha and T. Krishnavalli. They are among the six judges who were appointed to the court, and sworn in on Friday. The other two are R. Pongiappan and P. Rajamanickam.
The Madras High Court has a woman Chief Justice—Indira Banerjee, who was elevated to the post in March this year. The other women judges in the court are Justices Dr S. Vimala, Pushpa Sathyanarayana, V.M. Velumani, J. Nisha Banu, Anita Sumanth and V. Bhavani Subbaroyan. The total strength of the High Court now stands at 60 judges.
Earlier this year, for the first time in the history of the High Court, the first court had two women judges on the bench—Banerjee and Subbaroyan. The Delhi High Court's court number one has often seen the presence of two women judges on the bench. When G. Rohini was Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, Mittal was number two.
Three of the four major High Courts of the country—Delhi, Bombay and Madras—now have women chief justices—acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal (Delhi), Chief Justice Dr Manjula Chellur (Bombay) and Banerjee (Madras).
The recent appointments point to a gradual change in the scenario with regard to the number of women in the higher judiciary in the country. The Indian judiciary has faced criticism for its extremely poor gender ratio. It has been considered to be an old boys' club, and the number of women judges compared with their male counterparts in the higher judiciary continues to be extremely low. As of March 2017, there were 69 women judges among a total of 652 judges in the High Courts, which was 10 per cent of the total number. The Supreme Court has so far had only six women judges, and Justice R. Banumathi was the only woman judge in the Supreme Court at present.
