Collegium Recommends Justice Sunita Agarwal; Second Woman Picked for Supreme Court in 2026
New Delhi: The Supreme Court Collegium, headed by Chief Justice of India Surya Kant, on Monday (September 28, 2026) recommended Gujarat High Court Chief Justice Sunita Agarwal for appointment as a judge of the Supreme Court.
The recommendation makes it the second time this year that the Collegium has proposed a woman for the apex court Bench. In May 2026, it had recommended the elevation of senior advocate V. Mohana directly from the Bar to the Supreme Court. Justice Mohana was appointed along with four other judges.
Before this year, the last occasion on which multiple women were recommended and appointed to the Supreme Court in the same year was 2021, when Justices Hima Kohli, B.V. Nagarathna and Bela M. Trivedi were appointed together.
Justice Agarwal has been placed first among the three names cleared by the Collegium on September 28. The other two are Justice Devendra Kumar Upadhyaya, Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, and Justice Aparesh Kumar Singh, Chief Justice of the Telangana High Court.
Justice Singh's parent High Court is Jharkhand. Both Justice Agarwal and Justice Upadhyaya come from the Allahabad High Court.
Justice Upadhyaya, in his capacity as Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court, conducted the preliminary enquiry into allegations against a former judge of that court, Justice Yashwant Varma, after sacks of half-burnt currency notes were allegedly found at his official residence in the national capital. A preliminary enquiry is a fact-finding exercise and does not, by itself, amount to a finding of wrongdoing.
The five-member Collegium headed by the Chief Justice includes Justice B.V. Nagarathna, who is in line by seniority to become the first woman Chief Justice of India in 2027.
The Supreme Court currently has four vacancies. Its sanctioned strength has been increased to 38 judges, including the Chief Justice of India.
The most recent appointments to the court, besides Justice Mohana, were Justice Sheel Nagu, previously Chief Justice of the High Court of Punjab and Haryana; Justice Shree Chandrashekhar, previously Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court; Justice Sanjeev Sachdeva, previously Chief Justice of the Madhya Pradesh High Court; and Justice Arun Palli, previously Chief Justice of the High Court of Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh.
How appointments are made
Under the system of appointments evolved through judgments of the Supreme Court, a Collegium comprising the Chief Justice of India and the four senior-most judges of the Supreme Court recommends names for appointment to the apex court. The recommendation is forwarded to the Union government, which processes it and places it before the President of India. A recommendation by the Collegium is therefore not the same as an appointment, which takes effect only when the President signs the warrant of appointment.
Representation of women
Women have historically been under-represented in the higher judiciary, including in the High Courts from which Supreme Court judges are drawn. The two recommendations made by the Collegium this year add to a gradual, though uneven, increase in the number of women on the apex court Bench. Justice Nagarathna's expected elevation as Chief Justice in 2027, in the ordinary course of seniority, would be a first for the court.
