Justice Chandrachud praises women advocates' role in #MeToo movement

Supreme Court judge, Justice D Y Chandrachud on Saturday commended the women lawyers for promptly taking up cases related to #MeToo campaign, while highlighting the need for creating a database of such lawyers at institutional level for legal aid purposes.

Highlighting creation of a case-type-specific database as the need of the hour, he pointed out that such a database being compiled was seen in 2018 with the rise of the #MeToo movement.

“The rise of the Me Too movement, where young women lawyers started offering their services free of cost to assist women who have been sexually harassed. This even led to creation of databases of lawyers, who could be approached for specific issues,” Justice Chandrachud said.

He was speaking here at the launch of six-week long ‘Pan India Legal Awareness and Outreach Campaign’ of National Legal Services Authority (NALSA).

Read | Need to ensure press is free from bias: Justice Chandrachud

Justice Chandrachud said creating a database at an institutionalised level would help in legal aid cases only assigned to empanelled lawyers, who may not have a specialised practice area.

"It may be worthwhile for NALSA to solicit support from young lawyers who are passionate about certain specific issues. This will provide comfort to hesitant individuals to see legal aid without the fear of being shamed or harassed," he said.

Justice Chandrachud also stressed the importance of a similar exercise perhaps for the members of the transgender or sexual minority communities.

“Many of individuals in these communities are closeted and do not seek legal aid of the fear of disclosure of their identities. A number of them face significant threat to life by society and event their own family member," he pointed out.

President Ram Nath Kovind, who launched the legal awareness and outreach campaign, said “As a country, our aim is to graduate from ‘women development’ to ‘women-led development’. Therefore, increasing the number of women in National Legal Services Institutions is as important as reaching out to the largest possible number of women beneficiaries”.

He added that there are about 11,000 women lawyers among over 47,000 panel advocates at the district level and about 17,000 women para-legal volunteers out of the total number of nearly 44,000.

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