Above: Justice Indu Malhotra (file picture)

Senior Advocate Indu Malhotra today sworn in as the judge of the Supreme Court. She was administered oath of office by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra.

She is only the seventh woman in the history of Indian Judiciary to become the judge of the apex court. With this, the apex court will have two woman judges, the other one is Justice R Banumathi.

Malhotra also became the first woman to have been elevated to the Supreme Court judgeship straight from the bar.

The Supreme Court Collegium on January 10 had submitted two names to the government to be considered for the bench. One was Malhotra, while the other was Justice K M Joseph, chief Justice of the Uttarakhand High Court.

It is pertinent to note that in the first 39 years of its existence, the Supreme Court’s judiciary had no woman member. The glass ceiling was broken in 1989 with the appointment of Justice Fathima Beevi as a judge of the Supreme Court. Justice Beevi was not just the first woman judge of the Supreme Court but also the first Muslim woman to have made it to India’s higher judiciary. The other women judges of the Supreme Court have been Justice Sujatha Manohar, Justice Ruma Pal, Justice Gyan Sudha Misra,  Justice Ranjana Desai and Justice Banumati.

—India Legal Bureau