On Monday, the Supreme Court ordered that 30% of seats in State Bar Councils, where elections are yet to be notified, must be held by women advocates. For 2025, the Court specified that 20% of these seats should be filled through elections and 10% through co-option, emphasizing the urgent need to improve gender representation in the legal profession.
The order came in petitions filed by Yogamaya MG and Shehla Chaudhary seeking formal women’s reservation in State Bar Councils. The Court’s intervention follows concerns that women remain underrepresented in bar governance. While the elections in six Bar Councils, including Andhra Pradesh, Punjab & Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Telangana, Bihar, and Chhattisgarh, were already underway, the Court clarified that reservations would apply to the remaining councils.
Senior Advocates Meenakshi Arora and Manan Kumar Mishra, representing the Bar Council of India (BCI), discussed practical challenges, including low numbers of practising women advocates in certain states, and proposed partial co-option to meet targets. Various interventions, including from the Tamil Nadu Bar Council and NGOs like Jan Adalat, highlighted the systemic need to ensure women actively participate in bar governance.
The Bench, comprising Chief Justice of India Surya Kant and Justice Joymalya Bagchi, stressed that women’s representation must be meaningful and not symbolic. The Court observed, “Wherever the women members of the bar are reluctant to come forward to contest the 20% seats, the process of co-option in such bar councils will also be undertaken so that eventually women get 30% representation.”
It directed that proposals for co-option be submitted to the Court and limited co-option to 10% of the seats, with elections accounting for the remaining 20%.
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