Legal profession yet to welcome women into its fold: CJI Ramana

Chief Justice of India N V Ramana on Saturday said the legal profession is yet to welcome women into its fold as majority of them struggle within the profession, very few find representation at the top and even when they do, they still continue to face significant challenges.

"After 75 years of independence, one would expect at least 50% representation for women at all levels, but I must admit, with great difficulty we have now achieved a mere 11% representation of women on the bench of the Supreme Court. Some states, because of reservation policy may reveal higher representation, but the reality remains that that the legal profession still has to welcome women into its fold," he said.

Highlighting difficult challenges like deficient infrastructure, shortage of administrative staff and huge vacancies of judges, faced by the judicial system, Justice Ramana said he has a proposal to address the issue of infrastructure in a time-bound manner.

"A comprehensive proposal for creation of National Judicial Infrastructure Corporation is under preparation. We have collected the status report from across the country. A proposal in this regard will reach the Law Minister very soon. I expect full cooperation from the government," he said.

The CJI was speaking in a felicitation function here organised by the Bar Council of India in presence of Minister Kiran Rijiju and several top court judges, days after appointment of three women judges, including a future CJI, and six other judges at one go in the top court.

Maintaining that his endeavour was to address the issue of vacancies in the higher judiciary on an urgent basis, Justice Ramana, who was referred to as Sachin Tendulkar by Justice B R Gavai in his speech for having achieved many firsts, said, "I must correct the perception here. Like any game, it is a team effort. Unless all the members of the team perform well, it is difficult to win."

Extending his thanks to my colleagues in the Collegium -- Justices U U Lalit, A M Khanwilkar, D Y Chandrachud and L Nageswara Rao - for being active and constructive partners, he said due to the collective efforts, we could reduce the number of vacancies in the apex court to just one.

Pointing out that 82 names to various High Courts have been sent after he took over, the CJI said, he hoped the government will ensure that the names are cleared at the earliest just the way the nine names were cleared for the apex court within a week.

"It is an ongoing process. We hope to live up to the herculean challenge of filling nearly 41% vacancies existing in all the High Courts," he said.