The Supreme Court Collegium has withdrawn its approval to a proposal for the appointment
of Justice Pushpa Ganediwala of the Bombay High Court as a permanent judge of the
court after her two controversial orders on sexual assaults in the past few
days. In
order to appoint a permanent judge or make a judge permanent, the Supreme Court
Collegium sends recommendations to the Central government, which then approves
it.

On January 20, the Supreme Court Collegium, consisting of Chief Justice, Justices NV Ramana and RF Nariman, had recommended Ganediwala’s
name for confirmation as a Permanent Judge of the Nagpur bench of the Bombay
High Court.

She
recently passed two orders on sexual assault that sparked an outrage. In the
first ruling, the judge ruled that groping a minor’s breast without “skin-to-skin
contact” cannot be termed as sexual assault.

In
the second ruling, she said that “the acts of ‘holding the hands of the
prosecutrix’ (female victim), or ‘opened zip of the pant’…does not fit in the
definition of ‘sexual assault’”.

These
judgments have likely jeopardized her chances of becoming the permanent judge.

Justice Ganediwala, who was born in Maharashtra’s Amravati district in1969, was directly appointed district judge in 2007. She was then made an additional judge of the Bombay High Court in 2019.