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Semantee Chattopadhyay
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In the year 2020 Supreme Court Women Lawyers association wrote a letter to the chief justice of India urging to appoint experienced woman supreme court lawyers as High Court judges. As of 2020, there were two women judges in the supreme court and 78 in the High Court. The Union Minister for law and justice Ravi Shankar Prasad said the details of the female judges in The tribune us and not maintain Centrally. If we look at the history of judges in the supreme court there have only been 8 women judges since 1950. There are 25 high courts in India. The total number of judges sanctioned in these high courts is 1079. 414 of the seeds which are about 38% are vacant. Only 78 women are judges in these high courts. There are 11 women judges in Punjab and Haryana High Court. There are 9 women judges in Madras High Court. There are 8 women judges in Delhi and Bombay High Court each. High Courts of Patna, Manipur, Meghalaya, Telangana, Tripura and Uttarakhand do not have any women judges. The lower judiciary in India has a mere 27.6% women. There are only 4360 women judges out of the total strength of 15806 judges. At the entry-level in law schools and profession, the ratio of men to women is nearly 50:50. The SCWLA letter comes close on the heels of a suggestion made by the Attorney General of India, KK Venugopal, to increase the number of judges in the judiciary, which could help correct the known theoretical approach of judges in cases of sexual violence. In the past 70 years and unfortunately, there has been made no serious attempt to give adequate representation to women in the high courts and in the supreme court. The vacancies give opportunities to make up for the deficiency in the number of judges. If the quotes give representation to women then it will be a step towards removing gender discrimination. It will lead to the formation of a society with gender harmony.