SC Publishes Social Backgrounds of People Approved as High Court Judges by CJI Gavai-Led Collegium

New Delhi: Of the 93 people that the Supreme Court collegium led by outgoing Chief Justice of India B.R. Gavai approved for elevation as high court judges, 15 were women, 21 belonged to marginalised communities and 13 to minority communities.

Five people were also related to sitting or retired judges of the high courts or the Supreme Court, per a document released by the apex court on Friday (November 21), which was Justice Gavai's last working day.

From May 14, when Justice Gavai took oath as CJI, the Supreme Court collegium considered 129 candidates for elevation as high court judges and approved the names of 93.

Fifteen were women, eleven belonged to an Other Backward Class, ten belonged to a Scheduled Caste and 13 were minorities, the Supreme Court said.

Four of these women candidates belonged to minority communities while one hailed from a Dalit community.

A high court has its own collegium, consisting of the chief justice and the two senior-most judges after her, that initiates proposals for elevating candidates to the bench.

These proposals make their way to the Supreme Court collegium – which comprises the CJI and the next four senior-most judges – via the state-level executive and the Union law and justice ministry, after which its recommendations are sent for the approval of the president on the prime minister's advice.

Seventeen people whose names were approved by earlier Supreme Court collegiums were appointed as high court judges when Justice Gavai was CJI, the top court said.

Justice Gavai is the first Buddhist and second Dalit person to assume leadership of the Supreme Court.

Friday's disclosure marks the second time the Supreme Court has released information pertaining to the gender and communities of people recommended for high court judicature during the tenure of the outgoing CJI, with the first occurring when Justice Sanjiv Khanna demitted office in May, The Leaflet noted.

‘At times, politics plays a more important role than logic’

Incidentally, Justice Gavai, who will demit office on Monday, said on Friday during a farewell meeting organised by the Supreme Court's women lawyers that he ‘regretted’ he could not get a woman appointed as a judge of the apex court, Times Now reported.

Currently Justice B.V. Nagarathna is the only woman among the Supreme Court's 34 judges.

The outgoing CJI also reflected on several verdicts or orders he was part of during his time as Supreme Court judge.

Referring to his judgment – as part of the seven-judge constitutional bench's August 2024 verdict permitting sub-categorisation of Scheduled Castes and Tribes for reservation purposes – calling for the identification of the better-off ‘creamy layer’ among these communities so that they can be excluded from quotas, Justice Gavai said he was “very severely criticised” by other Dalits in response.

Speaking at a farewell function organised by the Supreme Court Bar Association he said that Article 14 of the Constitution enshrines equality, but “equality doesn't mean equal treatment to all”. Instead, it requires “special treatment to those who are lagging behind”, he said.

Invoking the example of his son, Justice Gavai said: “I ask a question to myself, as to whether a person residing in a tribal area belonging to a Scheduled Caste category, having no means to higher education, can he be made to compete with my son, who because of his father's office and father's achievements is entitled to the best of schooling and best of education? Would it be equality in a real sense or would it perpetuate inequality?”

He added: “However, at times, politics plays a more important role than logic.”

The top judge also referred to the order by his bench lambasting ‘bulldozer justice’ against persons accused of crime. “We held that the right to shelter is a fundamental right. And merely because somebody is suspected – or even for that matter somebody is convicted – his family, who are dependent, who are residing in that house, cannot be thrown away. Their houses cannot be demolished,” he said on Friday.

Earlier in the day, while presiding over a ceremonial bench on the occasion of his retirement, Justice Gavai said he left the court “with a full sense of satisfaction” and a “full sense of contentment that I have done whatever I felt I could have done for this country [and] this institution”.

Justice Surya Kant, who will take over the reins as CJI on Monday and who was also present on the ceremonial bench alongside Justice K. Vinod Chandran, described Justice Gavai in warm terms.

Calling the outgoing chief justice “wonderfully and effortlessly jolly”, Justice Kant said that “his wit arrives without warning and lands without force, dissolving tension in an instant. Many of us here will remember with genuine fondness how a single line from him could change the entire energy of the courtroom”.

Solicitor general Tushar Mehta had praised the CJI as well as Justice Kant for the “fresh breeze of Indianness in our jurisprudence” that he said they ushered in.

Justice Gavai then said that Thursday's opinion on the Presidential Reference that he issued as part of a five-judge bench did not cite any foreign judgments and that it reflected the court's “swadeshi interpretation”.

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