NEW DELHI: Supreme Court judge Justice BV Nagarathna has stressed the need for appointment of more women judges.
Delivering 28th Justice Sunanda Bhandare Memorial Lecture on ‘Role of Judiciary in Empowerment of Indian Women’, she said, “Having more women on the Bench can contribute to a more effective space to deliver justice in India’’.
“I would point to only three reasons-one, for the credibility and legitimacy of courts; second, the language and vocabulary of the judgments; and third, the administration of courts and need of different experiences to ensure that courts become more gender – neutral space,” she said.
The participation of women in the judiciary is not only a constitutional imperative but also a necessary step to achieve the goal of robust, transparent, inclusive, effective and credible judicial process, Justice Nagarathna said.
Justice Nagarathna, who is poised to take over as the first woman Chief Justice of India in 2027, said that having more women as judges would contribute significantly to improving the quality of judicial review and adjudication.
She said that the judiciary’s role as the protector of fundamental rights is not limited to checking state action but also in some circumstances, initiating a transformative social dialogue as a part of transformative constitutionalism.
“The Indian judiciary has played a yeoman’s role in the noble national endeavour for gender equality,” she said and referred to her judgments wherein she had held that the term ‘individual’ should also include ‘woman’.
