Indu Malhotra is a Judge and former Senior Counsel in the Supreme Court of India. She was the second woman to be designated as Senior Advocate by the Supreme Court, and she has also authored the third edition of a commentary The Law and Practice of Arbitration and Conciliation.
Indu Malhotra joined the legal profession in 1983, and was enrolled with the Bar Council of Delhi. In 1988, she qualified as an Advocate-on-Record in the Supreme Court, and secured the 1st position in the examination, for which she was awarded the Mukesh Goswami Memorial Prize on National Law Day. She was appointed as the Standing Counsel for the State of Haryana in the Supreme Court from 1991 to 1996. She represented various statutory corporations like Securities Exchange Board of India, Delhi Development Authority, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Indian Council for Agricultural Research, before the Supreme Court. In 2007, she was designated as a Senior Advocate by the Supreme Court of India. She became the second woman to be designated by the Supreme Court after a gap of over 30 years. She has been appointed Amicus curiae by different benches of the Supreme Court in some matters. Recently, she was appointed as an amicus for restoration of Jaipur as a heritage city. Indu specializes in the law of arbitration, and has appeared in various domestic and international commercial arbitrations. In December 2016, Indu was made a member of the High Level Committee in the Ministry of Law and Justice to review Institutionalization of the Arbitration Mechanism in India. After serving as a legal counsel in the Supreme Court for 30 years, she had been unanimously recommended for appointment as a judge of the Supreme Court. Her appointment was confirmed and ordered by the Government on 26 April 2018, and she is the first woman judge to be elevated directly from the Bar.
Important cases
Some of the important cases in which she has appeared are:
Indu Malhotra has specialised in the law of arbitration, and has appeared in various domestic and international commercial arbitrations. She is a Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, England. She has been empanelled as an Arbitrator with several Institutional Arbitration bodies like Indian Council of Arbitration, Delhi International Arbitration Centre, ASSOCHAM etc. She has recently authored an exhaustive and illuminating commentary on the Arbitration and Conciliation Act, 1996 published by Thomson Reuters. Eminent jurists have described it as a legal classic on arbitration.Her dissenting note on the majority judgement for allowing women's entry in to the famous Sabari mala temple got wide attention. As the lone women justice on the panel she noted in her dissenting judgement that “what constitutes an essential religious practice is for the religious community to decide” and not a matter that should be decided by the courts. She added that “notions of rationality cannot be invoked in matters of religion by courts”
Membership of committees and nominations
She has been a member of various Committees constituted by the Supreme Court from time to time. She is one of the members of the Vishakha Committee constituted by the Supreme Court of India. She was nominated as a member of the Editorial Committee for publication of the official journal "Nyaya Deep" of the National Legal Services Authority during the period 2004–2013. She was nominated as a member of the Central Authority of the National Legal Services Authority, a statutory body constituted under the Legal Services Authorities Act, 1987 on 7 January 2009. She was appointed a member of the Supreme Court Legal Aid Society, constituted by the Supreme Court of India from 15 July 2005 for 3 years. She was nominated as a member of the Indo-British Legal Forum held in January 2003 and again in 2008. She represented India in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, held by the Commonwealth Secretariat in May 1998 at Dhaka, Bangladesh. In 2005, she was nominated by the Chief Justice of India in the category of ‘eminent persons’ as a member of the General Council of the Gujarat National Law University. She has been nominated by the Ministry of Corporate Affairs to the Central Council and Disciplinary Committee of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, a statutory body established under the Chartered Accountants Act, 1949.
Social work
She is engaged in social and charitable work, and is a Trustee of Save Life Foundation, which is a non-profit, non-Governmental organisation. Save Life has been formed with the objective of prevention of road accidents, and formulating a system for providing immediate post-accident response to save the life of the victims.
Publications and academic pursuits
Indu Malhotra has authored a Commentary on the Law and Practice of Arbitration in India, which was released on 7 April 2014 by the Hon'ble Chief Justice of India. She has published articles in various journals and magazines.
