Meet Saurabh Kirpal, who may become India’s first openly gay Judge

New Delhi/Bhubaneswar: In case a recommendation of the Supreme Court collegium led by Chief Justice NV Ramana on the elevation of Senior Advocate Saurabh Kirpal as a Judge of the Delhi High Court gets approval of the Government of India, Kirpal may become the first openly gay Judge in a constitutional court in the country.

Apart from CJI Ramana, Justices U U Lalit and A M Khanwilkar are part of the three-member collegium.

Kirpal has been in news for the past four years. The Central government has been raising preliminary objections to his sexual orientation.

Here’re some details you must know about Saurbah Kirpal:

• After Graduating with a Physics major from Delhi’s St Stephen’s College, Saurabh Kirpal secured a law degree from the University of Oxford and a masters in law from the University of Cambridge.
• He worked at the United Nations in Geneva for a brief period and later came back to India.
  49-year-old Saurabh Kirpal is son of Bhupinder Nath Kirpal, who served as the 31st Chief Justice of India from May to November in 2002.
• He has been practising at the Supreme Court for more than two decades.
• He was also the counsel for Navtej Johar, Ritu Dalmia and others in the celebrated case that led to the reading down of Section 377 of the Indian Penal Code in 2018. Thereby, gay sex was decriminalized.
• Saurabh Kirpal has written an anthology titled “Sex and the Supreme Court: How the Law is Upholding the Dignity of the Indian Citizen”. He is also a board member of the Naz Foundation Trust, a Delhi-based NGO.
• He was first recommended for elevation in 2017 by the Delhi High Court collegium, led by then acting chief justice Gita Mittal. The proposal was approved by the Supreme Court’s collegium too. However, the apex court later deferred the decision on appointing him as a Judge.