Who is Justice Ranjana Desai, head of Gujarat panel on Uniform Civil Code?

Other members of the panel set up by Gujarat include IAS (retd) CL Meena, Advocate RC Kodekar, educationist Dakshesh Thaker and social worker Geetaben Shroff.

Desai completed her Bachelor of Arts from the Elphinstone College in Mumbai in 1970 and her law degree from the Government Law College there in 1973, after which she started out as a junior in the office of Justice S C Pratap of the Bombay High Court. Later, she got an opportunity to appear in several civil and criminal matters. She also worked with her father S G Samant, an eminent criminal lawyer.

Desai was appointed as a Government Pleader at the Bombay High Court in 1979. Subsequently, she was appointed as a Special Public Prosecutor for preventive detention matters. In 1996, she was elevated to the High Court Bench and to the position of a Supreme Court Judge in 2011.

After her retirement from the apex court, Desai was appointed as the chairperson of the Appellate Tribunal for Electricity in 2014. In 2018, she became chairperson of the Advance Ruling Authority.

Desai also headed the Delimitation Commission of India, whose final order for the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir recommended seven additional constituencies — six for Jammu and one for Kashmir — taking the total number of seats in the UT to 90 from 83 earlier. The panel’s decisions, which cleared the decks for the Assembly polls in the UT, however were met with criticism amongst mainstream parties in the Valley.

Additionally, Desai served as the chairperson of the Search Committee that was constituted to recommend the panel for consideration of the chairperson and members of the Lokpal.

A week ago, Uttarakhand became the first state to implement the UCC in the country, a year after the Desai-led panel submitted its report.