Three new judges join top judiciary

Three new judges joined India’s Supreme Court on 13 September: chief justice JS Khehar from Karnataka High Court, chief justice SJ Mukhopadhyay from Gujarat High Court and justice Ranjana Desai from Bombay High Court. Two more judges are expected to be elevated to the Supreme Court, while four sitting judges are scheduleded to retire by 15 October.

Justice Desai, the fifth female judge to be appointed to the Supreme Court, was a member of the Bombay High Court bench that upheld the death penalty for Mohammad Ajmal Kasab, one of the gunmen involved in the terror attacks in Mumbai in November 2008.

Justice Khehar was instrumental in a landmark ruling on the Sikh religion in Punjab and Haryana High Court. Gurleen Kaur filed a petition against the Shiromani Gurdwara Prabandhak Committee for denying her admission to a medical college on the grounds that she did not meet the eligibility criteria of the Sikh religion. The bench on which justice Khehar sat ruled that the educational institution was permitted to only accept applicants under the Sikh minority reservation quota if they fulfilled the “Sikhi swarup”, or the true nature of Sikhism.