Chief Justice of India N V Ramana on Sunday exhorted women lawyers to strongly raise their demand for 50 per cent reservation in the judiciary while assuring them of his “total support”.
“I don’t want you to cry but with anger, you have to shout and demand that we need 50 per cent reservation,” he said.
The CJI said that it’s an issue of thousands of years of suppression and women are entitled to the reservation and added, “It’s a matter of right, and not a matter a charity.”
The CJI paraphrased Karl Marx to say, “Women of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains.”
Speaking to women judges and advocates of the Supreme Court at an event organised to felicitate him and the nine new apex court judges, the CJI said women constitute only about 30% of the subordinate judiciary.
“In High Courts, women judges constitute 11.5%. Here in the Supreme Court, we currently have four women Justices out of the sitting 33. That makes it just 12%. Of the 1.7 million advocates, only 15% are women. Only 2% of the elected representatives in the State Bar Councils are women…. There is no woman member in the Bar Council of India. This needs urgent correction,” Chief Justice Ramana said.
“I am also forcing the Executive for applying necessary correctives… I am happy to have colleagues in the Collegium who are progressive and determined to bridge the gap in the higher judiciary,” the CJI said.
Over the last 70 years, there have been only 8 Supreme Court judges, beginning with M Fathima Beevi in 1989.
Taking the total number to four, three women were sworn in as Supreme Court judges on 1 September. Justice Nagarathna is set to become India’s first woman Chief Justice in 2027 for a brief period of one month.