Supreme Court Collegium Transfers Madras High Court Chief Justice Vijaya Tahilramani To The Meghalaya High Court

The Supreme Court collegium has decided to transfer Madras High Court Chief Justice Vijaya Kamlesh Tahilramani as chief justice of Meghalaya High Court.

The decision was taken at a recent meeting of the Supreme Court collegium headed by Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi and a formal resolution is expected to be passed shortly.

Incidentally, the Meghalaya High Court is the country’s smallest high court with a sanctioned strength of three judges including the chief justice.

It may be noted that senior judges, particularly those heading a larger high court, are usually not transferred to such a small high court.

Interestingly, any probable reason behind the move to transfer Chief Justice Vijaya Tahilramani from the Madras High Court which is the country’s fourth largest high court in terms of judge strength to the Meghalaya High Court which is the smallest high court has been kept secret.

Such a decision is being considered all the more unusual and surprising, given the fact the Chief Justice Vijaya Tahilramani is one of the senior most high court judges in the country and is also among the only two women judges who head high courts. The only other woman chief justice in India today happens to be Chief Justice Gita Mittal of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court.

Justice Tahilramani was appointed as Chief Justice of the Madras High Court on August 8, 2018, transferred from Bombay High Court where she was acting chief justice between 2015 and 2017.

During her tenure at the Bombay High Court, Justice Tahilramani had on May 7, 2017, upheld the conviction and life imprisonment of 11 people in the post-Gujarat riots Bilkis Bano gangrape case, while setting aside the acquittal of seven persons, including policemen and doctors.

The Bilkis Bano case had been transferred to Maharashtra from Gujarat by the Supreme Court.