Women lawyers can't make it to HC bench

Ramesh Kapila / TNN / Dec 9, 2005, 03:09 IST

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Gender bias appears to persist against women lawyers at Punjab and Haryana HC despite its 50 years of functioning from its present premises.

CHANDIGARH: Gender bias appears to persist against women lawyers at the Punjab and Haryana High Court despite its fifty golden years of functioning from its present premises.
Not a single woman lawyer has so far been considered eligible enough to make the grade for elevation to the bench, though the over 3,000-strong bar has a fair sprinkling of the fair sex.
As a leading member of the legal fraternity observed on condition of anonymity, they were victims of female foeticide since they were not allowed to be born as judges and killed without testing their professional proficiency to don the robes of superior judiciary.
All that the lady lawyers have so far been able to achieve is the election of Daya Chaudhry as the only president of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Bar Association in 1999-2000 when she won a hard fought electoral battle by a margin of 47 votes against her rival Atul Lakhanpal, the president incumbent of the key position of the bar.

Chaudhary, at present the assistant solicitor-general of India looking after the cases of the Union government at the high court, was the only woman president of a bar association ever to be elected including at the apex court.
While they are happy to note the development about the possibility of appointment of some of them as judges of high courts as indicated at the highest level, the lady lawyers here are not complaining of any discrimination against them in terms of relief granted by various benches.

On the other hand, they feel satisfied that they get due justice when decisions on cases contested by them are given. From less than double figures in the seventies of the last century, the number of women lawyers has grown to well over 300 at the high court alone with more and more young faces joining the stream.
However, the high court has been having its share of women judges mainly through the promotion channel from the subordinate judiciary.
The first-ever woman judge to make it to the high court was HK Sandhu who prior to her elevation happened to have served as the district and sessions judge, Chandigarh.
Bakhshish Kaur, the second to be elevated to the high court, also belonged to the Punjab cadre of district and sessions judges and was the legal remembrancer (LR), Punjab, at the time of her appointment as a judge.
Bakhshish Kaur is now heading the state administrative tribunal, Himachal Pradesh, at Shimla. Yet another lady judge who came to serve the high court here was Dr Sarojini Saxena on transfer from Delhi.

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