With the elevation of Senior Advocate V. Mohana to the Supreme Court, the apex court has got a woman judge after a gap of more than five years. There are now two woman judges in the Supreme Court.
Until Justice Mohana's appointment, Justice B.V. Nagarathna was the only woman judge in the Supreme Court. Mohana is the first woman to be elevated to the Supreme Court since August 2021, when Justices Hima Kohli, B.V. Nagarathna and Bela Trivedi were appointed together to the top court.
She is also only the second woman lawyer to be directly elevated from the Bar to the Supreme Court after former judge Justice Indu Malhotra. The highest number of women judges the Supreme Court had at a time is 4, when Justices Indira Banerjee, Hima Kohli, BV Nagarathna and Bela Trivedi were present simultaneously from August 2021 till Justice Banerjee's retirement in September 2022. Justice Hima Kohli retired in September 2024 followed by Justice Bela M. Trivedi in May 2025.
Now that the Central government has notified her appointment, she will join two very exclusive clubs: she will join the small group of legal minds elevated directly from the bar rather than from the judiciary itself and she will become one of the very few women to sit on the bench of the Supreme Court.The trajectory for a Supreme Court judge typically involves years of service as a High Court judge before even being considered for elevation to the apex court. Direct elevation from the bar to the bench of the Supreme Court is extremely rare.
The judges who were appointed directly from the Bar are Justices SM Sikri, SC Roy, Kuldip Singh, Santosh Hegde, Rohinton Nariman, UU Lalit, L Nageswara Rao, Indu Malhotra, PS Narasimha and KV Viswanathan.Mohana is only the 11th person to traverse this less trodden path.Justice Mohana was a first-generation lawyer, who started practice in 1988 in Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu. In 1992, she shifted to Delhi, and joined the office of Indu Malhotra- who was later elevated to the Supreme Court. She has also been part of the chamber of Senior Advocate CS Vaidyanathan. In 1996, she cleared the Advocates-on-Record exam.
She was conferred the senior designation in 2015. The Centre also approved the names of Justice Sheel Nagu, Justice Shree Chandrashekhar, Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva and Justice Arun Palli for elevation to the Supreme Court. With these appointments, the Supreme Court's strength has risen to 37 against a sanctioned strength of 38.
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