The new judges took the oath of office in the presence of Chief Justice Surya Kant on Tuesday in the Supreme Court complex. The morning was quite hectic. The induction was very quick. The names of the collegium were sent to on 27 May. The central government gave the green light just four days later on Monday
V Mohana was included in the five who were sworn in. This is her first visit in a long time. The top court had yet to appoint a single lady judge in over five years. This was the last time when three women joined it in August 2021. Since then, retirements slowly chipped away at their presence in the building.
Now it is Justice B V Nagarathna and Mohana who share the space. They are the only two female judges on the bench. Nagarathna has been there since the end of 2021. She is in line to become the first female Chief Justice of India next year.
Bumping Up The Numbers
The Supreme Court is this large, this big, this big.
The maximum number of judges working on the apex court is limited. Last month, the government passed an ordinance to change the rules. Their ceiling is now 38. This means that the Chief Justice has more hands to deal with piles of pending cases.
With the five new entries, the working strength jumped to 37. They are one seat down from being full! This is a significant change from Wednesday, which was only a couple of weeks ago. The court’s immediate need is to strengthen in a hurry as there will be a host of retirements soon.
In June, Justice Pankaj Mithal is moving out of his chambers. On June 28, he is joined by Justice J K Maheshwari as he leaves the door. Justice Sanjay Karol leaves in August later this year. Justice Satish Chandra Sharma is set to retire in November. Five persons at a time serve as a buffer. It ensures that the court continuously functions without a sudden drop in membership, before CJI Kant’s retirement in early 2027.
A Direct jump from bar to bench!
The majority of those who ascend to the top court follow the regular path. For years they serve as judges on high courts throughout the nation. They will be chief justices of the various regional courts. Then they make it to the final promotion to Delhi.
Mohana wasn’t like that. She went a completely different way.
She’s a direct elevation, a term of the legal community. That puts her in a position of going from being a litigator to being a Supreme Court judge. It is a rare move. She is only the second woman to do so in Indian history. In 2018, it was Justice Indu Malhotra who made the first.
Her background has some interesting linkages with Malhotra. Mohana is a first generation lawyer. She is the first lawyer in her family. She has been in the profession since 1988 when she graduated from Coimbatore Law College. A few years later in 1992, she packed up and moved to Delhi.
When she got to the capital, she joined the office of Indu Malhotra. There she picked up the ropes. She also worked in the chambers of senior advocate C S Vaidyanathan at some point in time. In 1996, she passed the tough Advocate-on-Record exam. The court declared her to be a senior advocate in 2015. For decades she was at the podium arguing before this bench, this bench before her.For decades she was arguing at the podium before this bench, before this bench.
The four men who joined her
Of the group of lawyers, Mohana was the only one who was taking the oath. The other four men who were already running high courts in India.
Sheel Nagu came from the Punjab and Haryana High Court where he was the Chief Justice. He has a wealth of administrative experience from the north.
Shree Chandrashekhar was on a visit from the Bombay High Court. He had a hectic two years prior to reaching Mumbai. He presided over the Jharkhand High Court as acting chief justice for a considerable period during 2023 and initial of 2024. Then he had a short stint in Rajasthan before taking the top job in Bombay in September. He was even part of a special three-member committee set up by Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla to look into the removal of another judge.
Sanjeev Sachdeva was the Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court. He was born in late 1964 and got his law degree from Delhi University in 1988. He cut his teeth practicing law in Delhi and was made a senior advocate in 2011. His first posting was as a judge in the Delhi High Court in 2013.
Arun Palli was from Jammu and Kashmir, and Ladakh High Court. He also got his law degree in 1988, studying at Panjab University. He served as a judge for 10 years at the Punjab and Haryana High Court, before the Chief Justice promotion was granted to him in early 2025.
Considers how to address gender inequity in agricultural education.
Mohana brings up the issue of gender disparity in the higher judiciary. The highest court has been in existence for decades. The numbers of women wearing the robes has always been extremely small, however.
Presently there are 35 men and two females.
Four judges was the largest number of female judges to serve at the same time. It was a short period of time between August 2021 and September 2022. In that period of time, Indira Banerjee, Hima Kohli, B V Nagarathna and Bela M Trivedi were all in the building. He felt there was a change in the wind. However, when the time came for the retirements, they began to take place. Banerjee left in 2022. Kohli retired from her position in September 2024. Trivedi retired just last month in May 2025.
The numbers dwindled back down to one. Nagarathna was the only woman on the bench, sitting alone. The collegium identified the need. Their actions of taking Mohana out from the lawyers’ ranks was an attempt to fix it.
