New Delhi: With the elevation of the Chief Justice of Madras High Court Indira Banerjee, the Supreme Court will have three women Judges serving at the same time in the 68 year history of the Supreme Court. At present Justices R. Banumathi and Indu Malhotra are the two women judges and Justice Banerjee will join them next week. The Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra, who is keen on women empowerment, has made this possible.
The CJI heads the five member collegium makes recommendation on appointment of judges to the apex court. On Friday night the Law Ministry notified the appointment of the Chief Justices of Madras, Uttarakhand and Orissa High Courts-Indira Banerjee, K.M. Joseph and Naveen Sharan-as Supreme Court judges ending the eight month long suspense on the elevation of Justice Joseph, whose name was reiterated by the Collegium last month.
Despite the Union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad requesting the apex court collegium to consider giving representation to communities, which are, not represented the Supreme Court is yet to have a Scheduled Caste judge for over years, after the retirement of Justice Balakrishnan. So far there has been only two SC judges the first one was Justice K. Ramasami in 1998. Justice Banerjee will have a tenure of a over four years. With their appointment the strength of judges in the apex court has gone up to 25 with six vacancies still to be filled up.
