HC judge who gave ‘skin to skin’ order to go back to district court

HC judge who gave ‘skin to skin’ order to go back to district court

New Delhi:  17.12.2021

The SC has taken the tough decision of refusing to continue Justice Pushpa V Ganediwala, who stirred a controversy in January this year with her back-to-back judgments taking what was seen as a warped and insensitive view of sexual crimes against children, as an additional judge of the Bombay high court, reports Dhananjay Mahapatra.

Now, with the collegium headed by CJI Ramana remitting her case back to the Bombay HC, Justice Ganediwala faces the prospect of being sent back as district judge.

No extension for HC judge who gave skin-to-skin order

The collegium comprising Chief Justice N V Ramana and Justices U U Lalit and A M Khanwilkar decided not to grant further extension of the tenure.

Her two controversial judgments, including one that held skin-to-skin contact is must for constituting a sexual offence, had forced the earlier collegium headed by then CJI S A Bobde to withdraw its January 20 recommendation to the government to appoint her as a permanent judge of the HC.

It then had recommended to the Centre to grant her a two-year extension as additional judge. However, the government disagreed and granted her a one-year extension, which will end on February 12, 2022.

On January 16, 2019, the collegium headed by then CJI Ranjan Gogoi and comprising Justices A K Sikri and Bobde had recommended her appointment as an additional judge of the HC.

At the time of initial consideration of the Bombay HC collegium’s proposal to appoint her as additional judge, the consultee judges in the SC — Justices A M Khanwilkar and D Y Chandrachud (both having Bombay as parent HC) — had conveyed their serious objections.

Nonetheless, the SC collegium approved the HC proposal and she was appointed as additional judge on February 13, 2019. Her profile in the Bombay HC website says: "She was meritorious throughout her educational career and awarded gold medals in BCom, LLB and LLM examinations". She was appointed as a district judge in 2007.

Justices Khanwilkar and Chandrachud had again registered their objections with the collegium prior to its January 19, 2021 decision recommending her appointment as a permanent judge. After the unsavoury developments, when the issue of deciding the fate of Justice Ganediwala was taken up by the present collegium this week, Justices Khanwilkar (now part of the three-member collegium for appointment of HC judges) and Justice Chandrachud opposed grant of further extension to her.