Madras HC Senior Designations : Supreme Court Refuses Urgent Hearing For Plea Highlighting Low Women Representation

A plea seeking intervention of the Supreme Court of India in Senior Advocate designations in the Madras High Court owing to low representation of women in the posts was mentioned before the bench comprising Chief Justice DY Chandrachud and Justice PS Narasimha on Wednesday. The bench refused to grant an urgent listing to the matter stating that issues such as these did not require out of turn intervention from the Supreme Court of India.

At the outset, the counsel, while mentioning the issue, submitted that only three women were being considered for designation of Senior Advocates in the Madras High Court. For context, Madras High Court is scheduled to take a final call on the 81 names of lawyers who have been shortlisted to be designated as Senior Advocates by the Permanent Committee headed by Acting Chief Justice of the Madras High Court T Raja. Out of a total of 175 applications, the Permanent Committee had approved 149 eligible applicants. Amongst the list, three women lawyers namely Advocates AL Ganthimathi, Dakshayani Reddy, and Narmadha Sampath were included.

Therefore, the counsel submitted that there was an extremely low numbers of women who had "dared to make an application" and then too only three were being considered for the post of Senior Advocates in the Madras High Court. However, the bench did not see the merit in the plea and also noted that no petition was submitted for the issue and the mentioning was made without one. The counsel tried to submit that a copy of the petition had been emailed.

However, CJI Chandrachud orally remarked–

"We don't even have a petition. What are we supposed to do? There has to be some discipline. As a CJI, we can intervene without a petition on mentioning if somebody has been wrongfully detained or is likely to lose their personal liberty. But this issue is pertaining to the designation of some senior counsel at Madras. We cannot intervene like this."