Fathima Beevi died recently. Consider the following statements regarding her :
1. She was the first woman judge of the Supreme Court of India.
2. She served as the Governor of Kerala from 1997 – 2001.

Question

Fathima Beevi died recently. Consider the following statements regarding her :
1. She was the first woman judge of the Supreme Court of India.
2. She served as the Governor of Kerala from 1997 – 2001.
3. She was the first Muslim woman to enter into higher judiciary.
Select the correct answer from the codes given below :

UnlockIAS · Accepted Answer

Correct — B, 1 and 3. Statements 1 and 3 are both true and statement 2 fails on one word: the State. Statement 1 is true — M. Fathima Beevi was appointed a judge of the Supreme Court of India on 6 October 1989 and retired on 29 April 1992, the first woman ever to sit on that Bench in the forty years since the Court was constituted in 1950. Statement 3 is true — she was also the first Muslim woman appointed to any of the higher judiciaries in India, so the two firsts in her life are distinct and both real. Statement 2 is false, and this is the single point on which the question turns: she was Governor of TAMIL NADU, not Kerala, from 25 January 1997 to 3 July 2001. The confusion is deliberate and it is easy to fall for, because Kerala is where she came from — she was born on 30 April 1927 at Pathanamthitta in what was then Travancore — and because a great many published compilations repeat 'Governor of Kerala' as though it were settled. It is not. Her Raj Bhavan was in Chennai, and her governorship ended in July 2001 in a constitutional controversy over her appointing J. Jayalalithaa as Chief Minister in May 2001 despite her ineligibility; the Union Cabinet recommended her recall, she resigned, and the Supreme Court later held the appointment invalid. Born in Kerala, Governor of Tamil Nadu — hold those two apart and the item solves itself. Statements 1 and 3 stand, statement 2 falls, so the code is (b).

Why the other options are wrong — (a) Accepts the one false statement and discards a true one. Statement 2 is wrong on the State — Fathima Beevi was Governor of Tamil Nadu from 25 January 1997 to 3 July 2001, not of Kerala — while statement 3, that she was the first Muslim woman to enter the higher judiciary, is correct and should not have been dropped.  (c) Correctly rejects statement 2 but is too cautious about statement 3. Being the first woman on the Supreme Court and being the first Muslim woman in the higher judiciary are two separate, separately documented firsts, and she holds both. This option is the trap for a candidate who spots the Kerala error and then stops reading.  (d) The all-inclusive option, and it fails for the same reason (a) does. Everything in the biography checks out except the State of her governorship, and one false statement is enough to eliminate an 'all of the above' code.

Concept: M. Fathima Beevi (30 April 1927 - 23 November 2023) rose through the Kerala subordinate judiciary and the Kerala High Court to become, on 6 October 1989, the first woman appointed to the Supreme Court of India — an office no woman had held in the Court's first thirty-nine years. She retired on 29 April 1992, served as a member of the National Human Rights Commission from 1993 to 1997, and was then appointed Governor of Tamil Nadu, holding office from 25 January 1997 to 3 July 2001. She was also the first Muslim woman appointed to any of India's higher judiciaries. She was awarded the Kerala Prabha Award in 2023 and the Padma Bhushan in 2024, posthumously.

State PCS 2024 Q144 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer

State PCS 2024 Q144 — Current Affairs PYQ with Answer