Senior advocate V. Mohana from Tamil Nadu was sworn in as a judge of the Supreme Court on June 2 in New Delhi. Chief Justice Suryakant administered the oath to Mohana and four other appointees.
The appointments follow Parliament’s passage of a Bill to raise the sanctioned strength of the Supreme Court to 38 judges, aimed at speeding up the disposal of pending cases. With the latest inductions, the total number of judges including the Chief Justice has risen to 37.
Along with Mohana, the new judges are Shaqeel Naqvi, Chief Justice of the Punjab and Haryana High Court; Sree Chandrasekhar, Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court; Sanjeev Sachdeva, Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court; and Arun, Chief Justice of the Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh High Court.
Direct elevation from the Bar to the Supreme Court is considered rare, as the convention is to appoint judges with long High Court experience. The report said only 10 advocates have been directly appointed as Supreme Court judges since 1950, with Mohana becoming the 11th.
It also noted that Mohana is the second woman, after Justice Indu Malhotra, to be directly elevated from advocacy to the Supreme Court. Mohana studied law in Coimbatore and has appeared in cases including senior citizens’ property rights and the Karnataka hijab ban matter.
