BREAKING| Supreme Court Orders Women's Reservation In Delhi High Court Bar Association Posts

The Supreme Court today ordered that there should be women's reservation for posts in the Delhi High Court Bar Association.

The Court directed that a meeting of the General Body of DHCBA be held as early as possible, not later than 10 days. The GB shall consider the desirability of reserving the post of Treasurer for women members. In addition to reserving the post of Treasurer, GB shall be at liberty to consider the desirability of reserving 1 more post of office bearers of the Bar Association for women members.

Further, the Court ordered that out of 10 Executive Committee members, there shall be at least 3 women members. The GBM may also consider that out of 3 women members of EC, at least 1 is a senior designated advocate.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant, Dipankar Datta and Ujjal Bhuyan was dealing with pleas seeking reservation for women lawyers in Delhi's Bar bodies. Yesterday, it had asked the Delhi High Court Bar Association to consider reserving post of Vice-President for women lawyers in the upcoming elections. The bench further found it disappointing that since the year 1962, there had not been even a single woman President of the Bar.

Senior Advocate Meenakshi Arora and Senior Advocate Mohit Mathur appeared for the petitioner and the DHCBA respectively. Initially, the Court suggested that the post of Vice President be reserved for women. However, after Arora submitted that the Vice President post is mostly "ceremonial", the Court mentioned the post of Treasurer instead in the order.

Background

The Court was dealing with two petitions seeking 33% reservation for women lawyers in Delhi's lawyer bodies viz. Bar Council of Delhi (BCD), Delhi High Court Bar Association (DHCBA) and all District Bar Associations.

One of the petitions was filed by Advocate Shobha Gupta, who contends that under­ representation of women in effective posts in BCD and other Bar associations can negatively affect their rights and access to justice as well as detract from the justice system's overall effectiveness.

Specifically seeking directions for 33% reservation in the upcoming Bar Council elections of all Advocate Bars in Delhi, Gupta initially approached the Delhi High Court. But on September 11, the High Court refused to grant interim relief and listed the matter for November 27.

As the Delhi Bar elections are scheduled to be held on October 19, and no interim relief was granted, the petitioners prayers were seemingly rendered infructuous. In this backdrop, the present pleas were filed before the Supreme Court, asserting that process of the elections has commenced with declaration/finalizing voter list.

Notice was issued on the petitions on September 20.

Earlier this year, the Supreme Court had directed the implementation of 33% women reservation in SCBA elections.

Case Title:

(1) ADITI CHAUDHARY Versus BAR COUNCIL OF DELHI AND ORS., Diary No. 42332-2024

(2) SHOBHA GUPTA AND ANR. Versus BAR COUNCIL OF DELHI AND ORS., Diary No. 42644-2024

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