Advocates Appeal to Supreme Court For Reconsidering Its Decision On Permanency of Justice Ganediwala

Advocates Appeal to Supreme Court For Reconsidering Its Decision On Permanency of Justice Ganediwala

Justice Pushpa Ganediwala faced a lot of criticism from the women and child rights groups for her Controversial Judgments, she found some support from the advocates practicing in Nagpur Bench of Bombay High Court (HC).

A group of Advocates from Nagpur Bench of HC have drafted a representation "To whomsoever, it may concern" requesting the Supreme Court (SC) Collegium for reconsidering its decision of withdrawing recommendation to the Union Government for making Justice Pushpa Ganediwala as a permanent Judge of Bombay HC.

The advocates taking signatures on the representation from members of the High Court Bar Association (HCBA) and District Bar Association (DBA) members. Once signed by the members it would be placed before the President of India Ramnath Kovind, Chief Justice of India (CJI) Sharad Bobde, Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi and others.

On 28 January 2021, the SC Collegium took decision to withdraw the recommendation after Justice Ganediwala passed highly debatable verdicts that were published by the media.

On 20 January 2021, the SC Collegium had recommended the permanency of Justice Ganediwala but at that time her Judgments weren't published.

The advocates are coming in support of the Justice and they clarified that the representation was not regarding condonation of her recent judgment wherein she ruled that skin-to-skin contact was a must for establishing charges under the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (POCSO).

In the verdict, Justice Ganediwala modified the sentence of the accused, who was sent for three years in jail under the POCSO Act, to one year under Section 354 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for outraging modesty.

The verdict led to massive controversy and protest in the judiciary, women and child rights activist came against the Judge. The next day of the verdict, Attorney General KK Venugopal pointed it out to the CJI led bench stressing the need to stay it immediately. He suggested the Bench that the judgment passed by Justice Ganediwala should be stayed else it would set a dangerous precedent across the nation.

According to the lawyers, the SC Collegium should not have withdrawn their recommendation and they have overreacted when the media published the news on the said verdict.