Who is Indu Malhotra? In a first, Supreme Court collegium has selected senior advocate Indu Malhotra as the first woman lawyer to be directly appointed as a judge of the apex court. Along with Malhotra, Uttarakhand High Court Chief Justice KM Joseph has also been promoted as a Supreme Court justice. Malhotra holds the distinction of being only the second woman in Supreme Court’s history to be designated as a senior advocate in 2007. In all, Malhotra is going to be the seventh woman judge since independence to make it to the Supreme Court. At present, Justice R Banumathi is the lone woman judge in the apex court.

As per a report by www.indialegallive.com, Malhotra is an expert in arbitration and has authored the third edition of The Law and Practice of Arbitration and Conciliation, 2014. The senior lawyer has appeared in various domestic and international commercial arbitrations. The report says that Malhotra has been a part of Law and Justice ministry’s High Level Committee (HLC) to review ‘Institutionalization of Arbitration Mechanism in India’.

Indu is the daughter of noted lawyer Om Prakash Malhotra. She had enrolled as a lawyer in the Bar Council of Delhi in 1983. In 1988, Malhotra qualified as an Advocate-on-Record (AoR) in the Supreme Court. She has served as Standing Counsel for the State of Haryana and represented statutory bodies like the Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Securities Exchange Board of India (Sebi), Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR), before the Supreme Court.

The first woman to be appointed as a judge of the apex court was Justice M Fathima Beevi in 1989. Thereafter, Justice Sujata V Manohar, Justice Ruma Pal, Justice Gyan Sudha Misra and Justice Ranjana Prakash Desai were able to make it to the top court as judges. Malhotra is the author of ‘O.P.Malhotra on the law and practice of Arbitration & Conciliation’ published by Thomson Reuters, Legal. She is associated with NGO Save Life Foundation and was the counsel in the 2013 case when Supreme Court recommended a number of laws for good samaritans who save lives in road accidents.

Courtesy: http://www.financialexpress.com