Hope time for 1st woman CJI won’t be very far off: Justice Nariman

Speaking on women leadership in the 20th century, he said “the 1960’s brought a rich haul of women Prime Ministers."

Supreme Court judge Justice Rohinton Fali Nariman on Friday expressed “hope” that “the time for the first woman Chief Justice of India won’t be very far off”. He said this while delivering the 26th Justice Sunanda Bhandare Memorial Lecture on ‘Great Women Of History’ here.

Speaking on women leadership in the 20th century, he said “the 1960’s brought a rich haul of women Prime Ministers. For the first time you had (Sirimavo) Bandaranaike in Ceylon, you had Indira (Gandhi) here, you also had Golda Meir in Israel. In 1979, you had Margaret Thatcher, after which I have counted — there is something like a 125 women heads of state, whether president or PM since then”.

“In India, we have had a woman President. But unfortunately, despite the fact that we have had a woman President and we have had a woman Prime Minister, we have never had a woman Chief Justice”.

Justice Nariman said late Justice Bhandare “was probably the candidate for becoming the first woman Chief Justice of India. Unfortunately, life was cruel to her and cut her remarkable career short” and added, “in any event, I hope that given the present dispensation, the time for the first woman Chief Justice won’t be very far off”.

The comments come a day after Chief Justice of India S A Bobde during a hearing remarked that the “time has come for a woman Chief Justice of India”. The bench headed by him was hearing a plea filed by the Supreme Court Women Lawyers Association seeking the court’s intervention to consider more women for appointment as judges in high courts.

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