In a significant move to fill vacancies, the Supreme Court Collegium on Wednesday recommended the appointment of senior advocate V. Mohana to the rank of a judge at the apex court.
If appointed, the senior advocate will become the second woman from Tamil Nadu to reach the post after Justice R. Banumathi, and the second from the Bar after Justice Indu Malhotra.
The Supreme Court Collegium has recommended five names to the Centre for appointment as judges of the Supreme Court of India.
— ANI (@ANI) May 27, 2026
The Collegium recommends Justice Sheel Nagu, Chief Justice of Punjab and Haryana High Court, Justice Shree Chandrashekhar, Chief Justice of Bombay High… pic.twitter.com/q3Wad7aRag
Other judges who were recommended for the same post include Justice Sheel Nagu, Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court; Justice Shree Chandrashekhar, Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court; Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva, Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court; and Justice Arun Palli, Chief Justice of the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court.
Designated as a senior advocate in the Supreme Court in April 2015, Mohana has worked with prolific faces in the legal and political community, such as Kapil Sibal, K.K. Venugopal, P. Chidambaram, Arun Jaitley, and T. Andhyarujina, among others, and was also a panel lawyer for the Government of India.
The path to the Supreme Court
V. Mohana, who studied law at the Coimbatore Law College, graduated in 1988 from what was India's first-ever batch of the five-year integrated law course, introduced in 1983.
After graduation, she continued an internship—that she had begun during her college education—in the office of M. Panchapakesan, working in Tamil Nadu's trial courts till 1992, when she decided to move to Delhi to work under Justice Indu Malhotra, who was then an advocate-on-record.
"It was difficult for women in those days to get cases of their own, especially in small cities ... Delhi provides lots of opportunities, definitely better than any other city. Because you have trial courts, high court, administrative tribunal, MRTP commission (now Competition Commission, Competition Appellate Tribunal), CESTAT, Army Tribunal, etc. and of course the Hon’ble Supreme Court of India. So there is a varied practice and scope for every field," she recounted in a 2015 interview with Superlawyer.
She then moved to the chambers of Senior Advocate C.S. Vaidyanathan, where she worked in several cases widely reported between 1992 and 1996, such as the Amratlal Prajivandas case, McDowell case, and the Jain commission case after the death of Rajiv Gandhi.
Over the years, V. Mohana moved up the ladder, earning her a role in the National Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission back when it was newly formed, as well as additional roles as a Supreme Court mediator and an honorary editor for the Supreme Court Reports (SCR) before the SCR got its own editors.
Most importantly, she was a panel lawyer for the apex court's legal services committee, working in a lot of cases between 1996 and 2013, before she was elevated to her present position on April 23, 2015.
"People have started recognising women lawyers and their good work. But there should be more designations and elevations from the women’s section. Women should also work harder and continue to work with sincerity and dedication," she added in the interview.
