First all-women bench sits on ESI Act case

Coming ahead of the International Women’s Day on March 8, the sitting of the full bench comprising Justice Pushpa Sathyanarayana, Justice Anita Sumanth and Justice PT Asha drew lot of men and women advocates to the court hall where the hearing transpired to have a glimpse of the women power at work. However, the full bench after a bout of hearing adjourned the caseto Thursday.

In the past, female judges have outnumbered men in a full bench, when Justice TS Sivagnanam sat along with Justice V Bhavani Subbaroyan and Justice Asha last year. However, this is for the first time in the history of the High Court that all-women full bench sat on a case.

The MHC has many first to its credits when it comes to lauding its women power. Presently, nine out the 55 sitting judges are women. In fact, MHC during the tenure of former Chief Justice Indira Banarjee had as many as 11 judges. However, following the retirement of Justice S Ramathilagam and thereafter the resignation of justice VK Tahilaramani, then Chief Justice of Madras High Court, the number of women judges dropped.

Chief Justice AP Sahi had constituted the full bench of three women judges to decide on whether unaided private educational institutions in the State could be treated to be an establishment under Section 1(5) of the Employees State Insurance Act of 1948 so that the provisions of the legislation could be made applicable to them.

The writ petition filed by the All India Private Educational Institutions Association had submitted that the Tamil Nadu Government had discriminated between private unaided educational institutions and the Government-aided educational institutions by issuing a notification for application of the ESI Act only on private educational institutions. Subsequently, several petitions came to be filed in this behalf and in now set to be disposed of by the full bench.

The State government had issued a notification in 2010 stating that the provisions of the ESI Act were being extended to educational institutions (excluding government and government- aided) in consultation with ESI and with the approval of theCentral government.