Four HCs to have women chief justices simultaneously

IN a historical number one for the higher judicatory, quartet heights courts across the country are set to simultaneously have women chief justices after the Union government on Tuesday notified the appointment of Sikkim High Court judge Justice Meenakshi Madan Rai as the next chief justice of the Patna High Court.Union law minister Arjun Ram Meghwal announced the appointment through a post on X. Justice Rai will succeed Justice Sangam Kumar Sahoo, who demits office as chief justice of the Patna High Court on June 4.The notification comes days after the Supreme Court collegium, headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, recommended Justice Rai’s appointment on May 22.With Justice Rai’s appointment, Indian high courts will, for the first time, have four serving women chief justices simultaneously. The other women presently heading high courts are Justice Sunita Agarwal at the Gujarat High Court, Justice Revati Mohite Dere at the Meghalaya High Court and Justice Lisa Gill at the Andhra Pradesh High Court. There are 25 high courts in the country.The development marks another milestone in the gradual increase in women’s representation in the higher judiciary, an issue that has repeatedly figured in discussions among judges, lawyers and parliamentary committees.The appointment also assumes significance because the Patna High Court, one of the oldest constitutional courts in the country, has historically witnessed limited representation of women in positions of judicial leadership.According to data placed by the Union law ministry in Parliament earlier this year, 170 women judges have been appointed to various high courts since 2014, including 96 in the last five years alone, while six women have been elevated to the Supreme Court during the same period.The government has maintained that judicial appointments are made on the recommendations of the Supreme Court collegium and has encouraged high courts to consider suitable women candidates to enhance diversity on the bench.To be sure, this will be only the second known instance of four women simultaneously heading high courts in the country. In the earlier instance in 2017, one of the four women was serving only as an acting chief justice and not as a regularly appointed chief justice on the recommendation of the collegium.Justice Rai, who has been a judge of the Sikkim High Court since April 2015, is among the senior-most women judges presently serving in the constitutional courts.Born in July 1964, she is the daughter of former Sikkim home secretary Madan Mohan Rasaily. She enrolled with the Bar Council of Delhi in 1990 and practised before the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court before returning to Sikkim.She has also served as acting chief justice of the Sikkim High Court. In a development earlier reported by HT, Justice Rai had in December 2025 withdrawn certain post-retirement facilities extended to her predecessor, Justice Biswanath Somadder, triggering a debate within judicial circles on conventions governing benefits extended to retired chief justices and issues of administrative propriety.