New on the first bench

Justice Desai,who turns 62 in October,admitted at her farewell in Bombay High Court that she had not cooked a complete meal for 15 or 16 years. A High Court judge for 15 years and a lawyer for 22,Justice Desai is popularly remembered by the Bombay Bar as one who could throw a winning smile and yet be strict at the same time. Now the fifth woman to be a Supreme Court judge,Justice Desai had in the Bombay HC upheld the death penalty to Ajmal Kasab for 26/11. She hails from a family of lawyers ; her father-in-law Amul Desai is a former finance minister of Gujarat who once defeated former prime minister Morarji Desai.

Desai graduated in economics and politics from Mumbais Elphinstone College,studied at Bombay Government Law College,and started practising in 1973. She was made assistant government pleader in the Bombay High Court in 1979 and later appointed special public prosecutor for preventive detention matters. In 1995,she was government pleader for the appellate side. She was invited to the HC bench on April 15,1996.

He proposed,Modi disposed

Justice S J Mukhopadhaya

His elevation to the Supreme Court comes shortly after a difference of opinion with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi on the appointment of the Lokayukta,an office vacant for nine years. Justice Mukhopadhaya,then Chief Justice of Gujarat High Court,suggested Justice R A Mehta as Lokayukta,supported by the states Leader of the Opposition and later appointed by Governor Kamla Beniwal,but Modi refused to accept it.

Born on March 15,1950,Mukhopadhaya,son of a Patna High Court lawyer,is a science graduate from Magadh University. When designated a senior advocate in February 1993,he had a flourishing practice in Patna and the HCs Ranchi bench.

In a judgment on Panchayat Raj laws,Justice Mukhopadhaya declared there cannot be separate reservation for the seat of mukhiya/pramukh/adhyakchh as this would amount to 100 per cent,when the permissible limit is 50 per cent. Made permanent judge in the Patna High Court in 1994,he later served in the HCs of Jharkhand and Tamil Nadu,acted as Madras Chief Justice for nine days in May 2008 and took over as Gujarat CJ in 2009.

He set the benchmark for Sikhs

Justice Jagdish Singh Khehar

The most significant of his many judgments was on who could claim benefits provided to a Sikh under the Sikh Gurdwara Act,1925. Speaking for a three-judge bench of the Punjab and Haryana High Court in 2009,Justice Khehar said: Retaining hair unshorn is a fundamental tenet of the Sikh religion and a Sikh is one who keeps unshorn hair and does not trim beard or pluck eyebrows.

Justice Khehar,who could possibly become the first Sikh Chief Justice of India in January 2017,is the only jurist to be involved in impeachment proceedings against two judges. He was counsel for a Tamil Nadu MP,M Krishnaswamy,in the defence of SC judge V Ramaswami. Later,when a judge,he was on a panel studying the grounds on which the removal of Karnataka Chief Justice P D Dinakaran had been sought. Both motions fell through.

A science graduate and gold medal-winning law postgraduate from Panjab University,Justice Khehar practised mainly in the Punjab and Haryana HC. He was made a judge there in February 1999,elevated as Uttarakhand Chief Justice in 2009 and transferred as Karnataka CJ in 2010.