Who has been appointed as the first woman Chief Justice of Uttarakhand High Court?
- (a)Justice Banumathi
- (b)Justice Ritu Bahri
- (c)Justice Indu Malhotra
- (d)Justice Bela Trivedi
Correct — B, Justice Ritu Bahri.
Justice Ritu Bahri took oath as Chief Justice of the High Court of Uttarakhand in February 2024, the first woman to head that court since it was constituted in 2000.
Her tenure ran until October 2024, and the court's own record carries her among its former Chief Justices.
She reached that office from the Punjab and Haryana High Court, where she had been a judge since August 2010 and Acting Chief Justice from October 2023.
Carry away the discipline the stem demands: a "first woman" question is settled by matching the judge to the named court, not by picking the best-known woman judge on the list.
- (a)Justice Banumathi — This is Justice R. Banumathi, and her High Court leadership belongs to Ranchi. She was Chief Justice of the Jharkhand High Court from 16 November 2013 until her elevation to the Supreme Court in August 2014.
Her judicial career began on the Madras High Court, where she was appointed a judge in April 2003, and she retired from the Supreme Court on 19 July 2020.
The record reads Madras, then Jharkhand, then the Supreme Court.
- (c)Justice Indu Malhotra — Justice Indu Malhotra's landmark is a different one. Appointed on 27 April 2018, she was the first woman advocate elevated directly from the Bar to the Supreme Court of India, and she retired in March 2021.
Her route to the bench ran through practice as a senior counsel in the Supreme Court, so her name answers a question about the Bar, not about who headed a particular High Court.
- (d)Justice Bela Trivedi — Justice Bela M. Trivedi belongs to a different bench. She was elevated to the Supreme Court of India from the Gujarat High Court on 31 August 2021, and she retired from the Supreme Court on 9 June 2025.
Her High Court service lay in the west: Gujarat from February 2011, the Rajasthan High Court from June 2011 to February 2016, and Gujarat again from 2016 until her elevation.
The Chief Justice of a High Court is a distinct constitutional office, not simply the senior-most judge sitting there. Under Article 217(1) the President appoints a High Court judge after consultation with the Chief Justice of India and the Governor of the State.
That same clause adds a third consultee, the Chief Justice of that High Court, for the appointment of a judge other than the Chief Justice. The top office is therefore filled through a shorter consultation than a puisne judgeship.
A Chief Justice is commonly brought in from a High Court other than the one where the judge has served.
That is why the name attached to a court is often not a name from that state, and why Justice Bahri moved from Chandigarh to Uttarakhand.
Uttarakhand's High Court is young. It was established on 9 November 2000, when the state was carved out of Uttar Pradesh, and it then bore the name High Court of Uttaranchal; court and state became Uttarakhand from 1 January 2007 under the Uttaranchal (Alteration of Name) Act, 2006.
Justice Ashok A. Desai assumed office as its first Chief Justice on 6 December 2000, about a month after the court came into being, so the list of holders is short enough to learn end to end.
Several of them moved on to the Supreme Court — S.H. Kapadia, J.S. Khehar and K.M. Joseph among them — which ties this small state list to national judiciary material.
- The court was established on 9 November 2000 as the High Court of Uttaranchal; it became the High Court of Uttarakhand when the state was renamed from 1 January 2007.
- Justice Ritu Bahri took oath as Chief Justice of the High Court of Uttarakhand in February 2024 and demitted office in October 2024.
- The High Court of Uttarakhand names Justice Ritu Bahri as the first woman Chief Justice of that court.
- Before Uttarakhand, Justice Bahri was a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court from August 2010 and its Acting Chief Justice from October 2023.
- Article 217(1) has the President appoint a High Court judge after consultation with the Chief Justice of India and the Governor of the State.
- For a judge other than the Chief Justice, Article 217(1) adds the Chief Justice of that High Court as a consultee.
- Article 217(1) itself provides that a High Court judge holds office until the age of 62; the first proviso to Article 217(1) deals with resignation by writing addressed to the President.
- Justice R. Banumathi was Chief Justice of the Jharkhand High Court from 16 November 2013 until her elevation to the Supreme Court in August 2014.
- Justice Indu Malhotra was appointed to the Supreme Court on 27 April 2018 as the first woman advocate elevated directly from the Bar.
- Justice Bela M. Trivedi was elevated to the Supreme Court from the Gujarat High Court on 31 August 2021.
Each name carries a genuine judicial milestone; the court named in the stem picks out the highlighted row.
- The stem fixes one court. A judge celebrated for a different 'first' — the first woman elevated straight from the Bar, say — still fails a stem that names Uttarakhand.
- 'Chief Justice of a High Court' and 'judge of the Supreme Court' are separate offices held at different times, so a Supreme Court association settles nothing about where a judge was Chief Justice.
- Justice Bahri's record spans two courts. Recalling only 'Punjab and Haryana' points away from the Uttarakhand answer; her acting chief justiceship there and her chief justiceship at Uttarakhand are different appointments.
- A surname-only option such as 'Justice Banumathi' invites you to supply the rest from memory. Pin every option to a court and a date before choosing.
This idea is set as a straight name-to-office match: the stem names a court and a superlative, the options supply four judges' names.
The same material also runs the other way round — a roster of a court's Chief Justices with one name that does not belong on it — or shifts to the constitutional side, asking who the President must consult before a High Court appointment.
UKPSC_2024_PRE_GSI_Q602024Same paper and the same body of fact — the roster of Chief Justices of the Uttarakhand High Court. Q60 lists four names and asks which has NOT held that office, keying Pankaj Purohit; the other three, Sirpurkar, Khehar and Raghvendra Singh Chauhan, appear on the court's own list of former Chief Justices. What differs is the direction of the test: Q60 is an exclusion over a roster, while this item asks for one specific holder identified by a superlative, so learning the list serves both but only this one turns on 'first woman'.
RPSC_2023_PRE_Prelims2023_Q282023Same provision behind the office — Article 217(1) and who the President consults before appointing a High Court judge. What differs is both the level and the limb: the RPSC item asks the constitutional procedure for a judge other than the Chief Justice of the Rajasthan High Court, and on the text of Article 217(1) the consultees in that case are the Chief Justice of India, the Governor and the Chief Justice of that High Court. This item instead asks who actually occupies the top office in Uttarakhand, so one tests the mechanism of appointment and the other the identity of the appointee.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Justice Ritu Bahri came to the office of Chief Justice of the High Court of Uttarakhand in 2024 from which High Court?
- (a)Allahabad High Court
- (b)Punjab and Haryana High Court
- (c)Himachal Pradesh High Court
- (d)Rajasthan High Court
Answerb — She was a judge of the Punjab and Haryana High Court from August 2010 and its Acting Chief Justice from October 2023, and moved from there to head the Uttarakhand High Court in February 2024.(a) The Allahabad High Court exercised jurisdiction over the hill districts before the Uttarakhand High Court was constituted in 2000; it belongs to the state's judicial history, not to Justice Bahri's service.
(c) Justice Leila Seth became Chief Justice of the Himachal Pradesh High Court in 1991.
(d) The Rajasthan High Court is where Justice Bela M. Trivedi sat as a judge between 2011 and 2016.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Under Article 217(1) of the Constitution, the Chief Justice of a High Court is appointed by the President after consultation with:
- (a)the Chief Justice of India and the Governor of the State
- (b)the Chief Justice of India, the Governor of the State and the outgoing Chief Justice of that High Court
- (c)the Governor of the State and the Union Minister of Law and Justice
- (d)the Chief Justice of India alone
Answera — Article 217(1) names the Chief Justice of India and the Governor of the State as the consultees for the appointment of a High Court judge.(b) The clause brings in the Chief Justice of that High Court as a further consultee for the appointment of a judge other than the Chief Justice, so that third name does not reach the appointment of the Chief Justice.
(c) The consultees set out in Article 217(1) are judicial and gubernatorial; the Law Ministry's part in processing a recommendation comes from the Memorandum of Procedure.
(d) The Governor of the State is a named consultee for every High Court judge, so the Chief Justice of India is not the sole consultee.
- practice — not a real PYQ
Justice R. Banumathi, elevated to the Supreme Court of India in August 2014, held the office of Chief Justice of which High Court immediately before that elevation?
- (a)Madras High Court
- (b)Jharkhand High Court
- (c)Kerala High Court
- (d)Uttarakhand High Court
Answerb — She was Chief Justice of the Jharkhand High Court from 16 November 2013 until she was elevated to the Supreme Court in August 2014.(a) The Madras High Court is where she was appointed a judge in April 2003; that was a puisne judgeship, not the office of Chief Justice.
(c) The Kerala High Court is where Justice M. Fathima Beevi served before becoming the first woman judge of the Supreme Court of India in 1989.
(d) The Uttarakhand High Court was headed by Justice Ritu Bahri in 2024, which is a different judge and a different decade.