This article is written by – Himanshu Shukla, Student (IP University, Delhi)
The country may get the first woman Chief Justice in the next few years. The Collegium has sent 9 names to the Central Government, including three women, for appointment to the posts of judges lying vacant in the Supreme Court. If the name of Karnataka High Court judge Justice BV Nagarathna is approved by the government, then she can become the first woman Chief Justice of the country.
The names recommended by the collegium are Kerala High Court Chief Justice CT Ravindra Kumar, Karnataka High Court Chief Justice AS Oka, Gujarat High Court Chief Justice Vikram Nath, Sikkim High Court Chief Justice JK Maheshwari, and Justice MM Sundaresh. Apart from these, the college has also recommended the name of Senior Advocate PS Narasimha.
At the same time, the 3 women who have been recommended by the collegium to be judges of the Supreme Court are Chief Justice Hima Kohli (Telangana High Court), Justice Bela Trivedi (Judge, Gujarat High Court), and Justice BV Nagarathna (Judge Karnataka High Court).
If the central government approves, then Justice Nagaratna can become the first woman Chief Justice of the country in 2027. However, his tenure will be a little more than a month.
Currently, Justice B V Nagarathna is a judge in the High Court of Karnataka. She was not registered as a lawyer on October 28, 1987, in Bangalore. She started the practice in Bangalore itself and got a good hold in subjects like Constitutional Law, Commercial Law, and Insurance Law. On February 18, 2008, she was appointed as Additional Judge in the Karnataka High Court. Judges will be appointed in the Supreme Court after two years
September 2019 was the last time Judges for the top court were appointed in India.
Along with this, the judges were retiring from the post and since September 2019 (last appointment) there are 9 vacant posts of Supreme Court judges. Even after that appointment is not happening. As per sources, due to differences in the ideologies between the collegium members, there was no unanimity on the names, due to such differences the appointments were stuck.
