Behind Closed Doors: How Tribunal Appointments Exclude Women Judges

Recent months have offered an uncommon reason for optimism in the debate on gender representation. The elevation of Senior Advocate V Mohana to the Supreme Court ended a five-year hiatus in the appointment of women judges to the Court. Of equal consequence is the current leadership across the High Courts, where four women—Justices Sunita Agarwal, Revati Mohite Dere, Lisa Gill, and Meenakshi Madan Rai—serve as Chief Justices. The Bar, too, has begun to change; following the Supreme Court’s intervention, all Bar Councils and Associations have reserved 30 percent of elected positions for women, opening spaces that had remained inaccessible to women since inception. These achievements are the product of continuous struggle, scrutiny and public discourse. However, the intense focus on the Constitutional Courts and the district judiciary has inadvertently overshadowed the gender composition of the tribunals, which continue to be overwhelmingly dominated by one gender.Justice Mohana's Rise Won't Fix the Judiciary's Gender Skew, But It's a StartEmpowered by the 42nd Amendment Act of 1976, which inserted Part XIV-A to permit the creation of specialised tribunals, which have now become central to justice administration. As of today, the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT), operating through 19 benches across the country, shoulders a pendency of over 1.2 lakh service-related disputes. Commercial tribunals dealing with insolvency, taxation, company law, securities, and debt recovery collectively account for more than 3.56 lakh pending cases. The assets locked in these commercial disputes are valued at approximately Rs 24.72 trillion—a figure equivalent to nearly 7.5 percent of India's GDP for 2024–25. Meanwhile, the National Green Tribunal (NGT) is bestowed with the responsibility of striking a balance between environmental protection and development. However, notwithstanding their immense value, these forums have become the least representative adjudicatory forums. An examination of the composition of 19 major tribunals and quasi-judicial bodies, using publicly available records, indicates a grim reality. The exercise is necessarily limited by the availability of official information—complete data for bodies like the Armed Forces Tribunal (AFT) is obscured, with member details available for only four of its 11 regional benches–the discernible figures point to a consistent pattern of exclusion. Women in these 19 tribunals am ount for 17.8 percent of the total membership. Out of 611 serving members identified (including the chairpersons or presidents), 109 are women, compared to an overwhelming 501 men. As we move up the ranks—the picture is even grimmer.Of the 17 major national-level tribunals and quasi-judicial bodies examined for chairperson or presidential appointments, excluding Debt Recovery Tribunals and State Consumer Commissions, only the Competition Commission of India and the Mahanadi Water Disputes Tribunal are currently led by a woman. Every other institution is helmed by a male chairperson or president. Judges, Politics, and Bias: Is the Indian Judiciary Truly Independent?The historical record shows that this imbalance is neither recent nor incidental. For instance, the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), established in 1941, has seen 32 Presidents over its eight-decade existence without a single woman taking the helm. The record of the Central Administrative Tribunal shows that in over four decades, all 14 Chairpersons have been men.Of the 98 Vice Chairpersons appointed up to 2012, only three i.e. 3.1 percent were women. Even more strikingly, among the 475 individuals who have served as Chairpersons, Vice Chairpersons and Members (excluding the present members), only 45 were women—fewer than one in every ten appointments. Since its establishment, the Customs, Excise and Service Tax Appellate Tribunal (CESTAT) has had 15 Chairpersons, of whom only one has been a woman. Other consequential bodies, including the NGT, the Telecom Disputes Settlement and Appellate Tribunal (TDSAT), the Securities Appellate Tribunal (SAT), the AFT, the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity (APTEL), and the National Company Law Appellate Tribunal (NCLAT) have never been led by a woman Chairperson or President. The National Consumer Commission has recorded precisely one female president out of a total of 10. State Consumer Commissions fare marginally better, registering 46 women among 134 members and seven women among 29 Presidents. But broader membership data exposes a near-total exclusion from the adjudicatory process. The TDSAT has never appointed a woman in its 13-member history. CESTAT has inducted just nine women out of 189 appointments made. SAT has appointed exactly one woman out of 15; APTEL, four out of 30. The NCLAT’s record is particularly bleak, with only one woman having ever served—as a Technical Member—among 22 total appointees—till today. Alarmingly, these figures are not a relic of a bygone era. Today, the NCLAT, the Debt Recovery Appellate Tribunal (DRAT), the Appellate Tribunal under the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA), and the TDSAT operate without a single female member on their benches. The Debt Recovery Tribunal (DRT), similarly, functions with only three female presiding officers against 33 male counterparts. Perhaps most disquieting is the rapid reproduction of this demographic bias within nascent institutions. Unburdened by historical precedent, the Goods and Services Tax Appellate Tribunal (GSTAT) offered a genuine clean slate to construct a representative bench from its inception. That opportunity was squandered as well. Of its 84 newly appointed members, only five are women. Among the 50 Judicial Members, three are women, and across its regional benches, just two of the 22 Vice Presidents are women. The exclusion is no less apparent in the history of the Inter-State Water Disputes Tribunals. Although this study examines only the Mahanadi Water Disputes Tribunal, the record across all nine such tribunals speak of the same story of exclusion.Of the nine such tribunals constituted to date, the first eight failed to have even a single woman. The recent Mahanadi Water Disputes Tribunal stands as the lone exception, counting Justice Inderjeet Kaur as a member and Justice Bela M Trivedi as its head—though Trivedi’s appointment materialised only following Justice Khanwilkar’s resignation. This stands in stark contrast to global possibilities. In the United Kingdom, concerted reform has radically transformed the representation – women now constitute a majority of tribunal judges at 54 percent, tribunal Presidents at 57 percent, and non-legal members at 58 percent. There has been a conscious effort in the UK to make each tier inclusive. State Of Women In Judiciary: Time to Celebrate Or Introspect?To comprehend how this exclusion became so deeply entrenched in India, one must scrutinise the opaque structure governing tribunal appointments. The singular common thread linking leadership, judicial, and technical appointments is the Search-cum-Selection Committee (SCSC). Much like the Collegium system, the SCSC operates within a profound transparency deficit. There is virtually no public disclosure regarding the rationale behind its decisions, the specific metrics utilised to evaluate candidate suitability, or even the precise composition of the committee when rendering specific recommendations. Beyond the initial, open call for applications, the entire evaluation process is not known. The Supreme Court recently intervened to curb executive overreach, striking down restrictive provisions of the Tribunals Reforms Act, 2021, in Madras Bar Association vs Union of India (2025). By invalidating the minimum age requirement of 50 years and the truncated four-year tenure, the Court paved the way for younger talent to enter the fray. However, the extent to which this remedies the institutional prejudice against female candidates remains entirely ambiguous. Tribunal leadership positions are exclusively reserved for retired Supreme Court Judges, High Court Chief Justices, or former High Court Judges. While the undeniable underrepresentation of women in the higher judiciary naturally constricts the candidate pool. However, this cannot justify a near-total exclusion from leadership. The cohort of retiring female judges may be comparatively small, but it is definitively not zero. A limited talent pool does not logically necessitate an entirely exclusionary outcome.The true catalyst for this persistent disparity lies in the vacuum of public accountability. Operating behind closed doors, appointment committees face no obligation to disclose how many qualified women applied, how their dossiers were evaluated, or why they were ultimately bypassed. The small talent pool narrative acts as a highly convenient shield for institutional inertia and implicit bias, allowing gatekeepers to sideline qualified women without ever articulating a justification. Tribunals, Deadlines, Doubts: Is Supreme Court’s Order Failing Deleted Voters?This exclusion is equally unsettling for Judicial Members, who are drawn from retired High Court and District Court judges, or advocates possessing a decade of specialised practice. Comparatively, the District Judiciary has better representation of women judges. Therefore, there is no dearth as far as induction of women members from district judiciary is concerned which makes the statistics indefensible. For advocates, the barriers are inherently structural. The statutory prerequisite of ten years of specialised practice heavily penalises women navigating a male-dominated ecosystem that denies them complex, high-value briefs. Survey by the Supreme Court Bar reveals that a staggering 56.9 percent of women advocates have reported that gender stereotyping restricted their specialisation. Owing to such tendencies, only about a 2.5 percent identified with specialised tribunal litigation. The absence of women, therefore, is a complex tapestry woven from implicit biases, opaque appointments, and gatekeeping. On the other hand, technical and administrative posts have manifested the skewed statistics and historical biases from the civil services. Reserved for top-tier bureaucrats—primarily Indian Administrative Service (IAS) or Indian Legal Service officers at the Secretary or Additional Secretary level—or highly specialised domain experts, these roles intersect disastrously with the opacity of the SCSC.Eligibility criteria typically demand prior service equivalent to a Central Government Secretary. This rigid threshold forces selection committees to draw from a predominantly male cohort. Women currently constitute roughly 25 percent of the IAS, a figure that falls to just 14 percent at the Secretary level, substantially narrowing the pool of eligible candidates. Justice Yadav vs Justice Varma: When Politics Decides Who's Saved and Who's NotDismantling these barriers requires entirely discarding the language of passive optimism and piecemeal adjustments in favor of structural reform. The immediate establishment of an independent National Tribunals Commission (NTC), as directed by the Madras Bar Association, is imperative. "Concurrently, the National Tribunals Commission, whenever constituted, and the existing Search-cum-Selection Committees (SCSCs) should be statutorily required to have minimum representation of women on the selection panel.A predominantly male selection committee inevitably, even if unconsciously, perpetuates the replication of its own image. Inspiration can as well be taken from the Companies Act which provides for having least one-woman director—in certain classes of companies. Organically waiting for demographic shifts is a luxury, which cannot be afforded. For administrative and technical members, the Supreme Court’s landmark ruling in Lt Col Nitisha vs Union of India is an eye opener—where the Court dismantled discrimination in granting permanent commissions to women officers. This will eventually yield a broader pool of eligible candidates for bodies like the AFT. However, for judicial members drawn from the Bar, the experience deficit must be targeted at its origin. The State, encompassing public sector undertakings and major financial institutions, wields immense market power and must guarantee a minimum representation of women on its litigation panels in these tribunals. As the Supreme Court Bar survey noted, nearly 60 percent of women advocates identified the lack of institutional access as a primary barrier, strongly supporting reservations in empanelment. Democratising access to government briefs is the most tangible mechanism for equipping women with the specialised tenure required for tribunal elevation. While India grapples with the political will to enact these reforms, the United Kingdom offers a time-tested model. By relying on an independent Judicial Appointments Commission mandated to encourage diversity while preserving absolute merit, the UK has achieved parity. This was accomplished through aggressive outreach, pre-application mentoring, equality-tested selection materials designed to neutralise bias, and an Equal Merit Provision permitting preference for underrepresented candidates in tie-breaker scenarios. Given the sheer scale of the deficit in India, waiting for trickle-down equality is unviable. Long-term, UK-style reforms must be paired with immediate, decisive interventions.Furthermore, accountability cannot rely on sporadic audits or anecdotal observation. There is a need for a comprehensive annual audit detailing the gender breakdown of tribunal appointments and the demographics of the applicant pools. Data and its public scrutiny are the only effective antidote to institutional inertia. Tribunals hold the keys to a vast fraction of economic, environmental, and regulatory sovereignty. The challenge is not simply to appoint more women judges, but to create an adjudicatory ecosystem that is genuinely representative of India. So long as women remain locked out of these corridors, the promise of a truly representative, equitable, and modern justice system remains a constitutional fiction. Disclaimer: The author was one of the advocates in the proceedings that resulted in 30 percent reservation for women in Bar Councils and Bar Associations and was a co-author of the Supreme Court Bar Association's survey on women advocates. The analysis is based on publicly available information. Gender identification relies on official records and other public sources and may be subject to minor inadvertent inaccuracies. (Shaileshwar Yadav, Advocate, Supreme Court of India. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed are the author's own. The Quint is does not endorse or is responsible for them.)

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Unequal Benches: The Gender Gap Hidden in India’s Powerful Tribunals

Analysing the composition of 19 major tribunals and quasi-judicial bodies indicates a grim reality.

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