Over 300 women have taken up office-bearer and executive committee roles within Bar associations spanning Punjab, Haryana, and Chandigarh, following a Supreme Court directive requiring at least three in ten positions to be reserved for women. Tallied from roughly 145 associations, the September 11 election outcomes signal a shift in who holds local Bar leadership — positions that women have occupied far less frequently throughout the organisations' past.
The mandate draws its authority from a Supreme Court ruling in the matter of Deeksha N Amruthesh against the State of Karnataka and others. Under a ruling dated 24 March 2025, district, taluka, and other Bar associations became subject to a requirement that women lawyers fill at least 30 per cent of office-bearer and executive committee positions.
Three follow-up orders — dated January 16, March 13, and April 16 — expanded the scope of those directions and gave them added force. A ruling handed down on 13 March placed an obligation on the outstanding High Courts to bring women's representation up to a floor of 30 per cent within the elected governing and executive bodies of Bar associations. Under that provision, district judges gained the power to put forward women candidates for executive committee seats in cases where eligible female members existed but had chosen not to stand.
Under the April 16 directive, any association that fell short of the representation requirement stood to have its operations suspended and be subjected to a new round of elections. Nomination provisions were built into the ruling to fill gaps in seats where female candidates had not put themselves forward.
Following the receipt of those directions, the Bar Council of Punjab and Haryana took steps to roll out compliance across Bar associations operating in Punjab, Haryana, and Chandigarh. Governing the vote were the Bar Association (Constitution and Registration) Rules of 2015, a set of provisions drawn up after the Punjab and Haryana High Court issued a directive on the matter in 2014.
Rulings handed down in distinct proceedings relating to State Bar Councils set female representation at 30 per cent of available seats, with two-thirds of that allocation to be secured through electoral contests and the remaining third through the co-option process. In the matter styled Yogamaya M.G. versus Union of India, the court's orders took up the question of how women were represented on the statutory bodies that hold oversight authority over the legal profession. Two advocates — Yogamaya M.G. and Shehla Chaudhary — placed the question of women's representation within State Bar Councils before the court through separate public interest petitions.
Chief Justice of India Surya Kant drew a distinction between reservation and representation, noting that what had been put in place for women was a matter of representation rather than reserved quota. Seven of the 25 seats on the Bar Council of Punjab and Haryana are currently held by women, a composition shaped in part by the separate directions issued to State Bar Councils.
Across the three jurisdictions heading into the 11 September ballot, roughly 1,72,634 advocates held voting rights — with 83,501 of that total drawn from Haryana, 59,255 from Punjab, and 29,878 from Chandigarh. Women account for just under a quarter of all registered voters, with their 38,023 ballots making up roughly 22 per cent of the full electoral roll.
Voter rolls across the three jurisdictions tell a varied picture: just over 30 per cent of registered electors in Chandigarh are women, a share that drops to roughly 24.5 per cent in Punjab and falls further to about 17.4 per cent in Haryana.
Ballot tallies from all three jurisdictions placed women in officer and committee roles spanning the presidency, vice-presidency, joint secretaryship, treasury, library oversight, and executive membership. Across twenty associations — among them Bagha Purana, Dera Bassi, Ferozepur, Gurugram, Hansi, Jaito, Kaithal, Kalka, Kapurthala, Karnal, Kosli, Malout, Mohali, Nangal, Pataudi, Phul, Samalkha, Sardulgarh, and Tarn Taran — female candidates secured their seats without facing any opposing nominees.
Across both Punjab and Haryana — with towns such as Abohar, Amritsar, and Ajnala on one side and Yamunanagar, Sirsa, and Ballabgarh on the other — women took up office-bearer and executive roles within local associations.
Advocate Harpreet Kaur took up the presidency of Phagwara's Bar Association, becoming the first woman to hold that post in the organisation's history. A tally of 97 votes went in her favour, with Agnihotri, who practises as an advocate, drawing 71 from the same pool of ballots. Out of 176 people entitled to vote, ballots were submitted by up to 169 of them. Shiv Narayan Chopra, at 92 years old and long active in advocacy work, cast his ballot alongside the other participants.
Among the office-bearer positions filled in Phagwara, Preet Mattu took on the vice-presidential role under the women's-reserved category, while Reena Rani Brar and Renu were appointed to the posts of general secretary and joint secretary respectively. A vote among members placed Sunny Dev in the role of cashier.
At Mandi Dabwali, the race for the president's seat came to an exact deadlock, with both advocate Kali Devi Targotra and advocate Rajpal Singh Sidhu tallying 126 votes apiece. Under the arrangement they settled on, each would hold the position for a half-year before handing it over to the other.
Women had taken on top leadership posts in the area before the most recent policy took effect. Vidushi Rathee's election to the presidency of the Malout Bar Association placed her as the first woman to occupy that post, a period during which Kiran Bala Jain and Ravinder Kaur Nihalsinghwala also entered the State Bar Council among its earliest female members.
Voter attendance data gathered across key polling locations pointed to broad engagement with the electoral process. Voter participation in Karnal and Sonipat approached 89 per cent, with Panipat trailing only slightly behind those two districts. Voter turnout in Faridabad and Amritsar both cleared the 80 per cent mark, with Patiala coming in near 78 per cent and Gurugram landing close to 72 per cent. Voter participation in Jalandhar reached slightly above the 62 per cent mark.
Disparities in who has held leadership posts within the Bar have persisted over time, and these findings sit within that broader pattern. Across the three jurisdictions, women make up somewhere between one-fifth and one-quarter of the combined voter pool, yet their share of elected office has consistently fallen well below that proportion.
The Supreme Court's directives point toward a measurable shift in how local Bar associations and State Bar Councils are composed — one that would place women in a greater share of governing roles than they currently hold.
