The Supreme Court on Wednesday issued notice to the Union Government and all States on a PIL seeking a minimum 30% reservation for women advocates in government legal panels, law officer appointments, and Centre/State/PSU empanelments.

A Bench of CJI Surya Kant, Justice Joymalya Bagchi, and Justice Vipul M. Pancholi passed the order in a plea filed by the Ladli Foundation Trust.

Appearing for the petitioner, Senior Advocate Vikas Singh submitted that despite women entering the legal profession in significant numbers, their representation in positions of authority remains disproportionately low. Referring to a recent SCBA survey, he argued that even empanelled women lawyers are often not assigned cases, making representation merely symbolic without a mechanism ensuring actual work allocation.

The petition presents stark empirical data to illustrate this “pyramidal exclusion” across the Indian legal machinery. It notes that while India has over 20 lakh registered advocates, only about 3 lakh are women, and not a single state currently has a woman serving as its Advocate General (AG). In over 75 years since Independence, no woman has ever been appointed as the Attorney General or Solicitor General for India. Furthermore, data from the India Justice Report shows that 13 out of 17 large states fail to reach even a 30% threshold for female panel lawyers: with representation dropping below 15% in states like Odisha (14.2%) and Uttar Pradesh (14.6%), creating a persistent pipeline bottleneck that restricts women from advancing to senior designations and higher judicial elevations.

During the hearing, Senior Advocate Dr. Monika Gusain highlighted the lack of women in senior law officer roles in Haryana, adding that women appointees are sometimes retained without receiving actual case work.

The Bench issued notice and directed parties to place comprehensive material on record.