Bombay High Court Chief Justice Manjulla Chellur retires

Justice Manjula Chellur along with her husband Dr. CN Gupta. (Express Photo by Amit Chakravarty/Files)

Justice Manjula Chellur retired as the Chief Justice of the Bombay High Court Monday after a brief tenure of under 16 months. She was sworn in on August 22, 2016. Justice V K Tahilramani will take over as the Acting Chief Justice.

On Monday, while thanking everyone, she said, “I have had the best time here. I have learnt a lot here, be it juniors or seniors…” She was the second woman judge to have taken over as the Chief Justice of the Bombay HC, after Justice Sujata Manohar, who served as CJ in 1994.

On her last working day, Justice Chellur pronounced judgments on two important matters relating to the proposed Metro fare hike, which was struck down, besides dismissing a petition by 63 Moons Technologies Ltd or Financial Technologies India Ltd opposing the merger with its unit National Spot Exchange Ltd.

During her tenure, she designated, for the first time, eight different division benches to hear public interest litigations (PILs), with a special all-women bench for PILs on issues related to women and children. To lessen the burden of pending litigations, Justice Chellur had ensured that the HC worked during the two-month-long summer holiday.

In the last one year, she heard several important cases relating to Maratha reservation in jobs and education, opposition to Metro-III project by residents of south Mumbai, pothole matter, etc.

Last month, she had also invited the Chief Justice of India, Dipak Misra, for the inauguration of an Alternate Dispute Resolution centre and a creche for lawyers and staff of High Court at the adjacent CTO building in south Mumbai.