Victoria Gowri

Gowri's family has been associated with the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) since decades.[2] She has been associated with Seva Bharati — an affiliate of the Sangh Parivar— since her college days. In October 2010, Gowri was appointed to head the party's Women's Wing in Kerala.[3][2] In 2016, she was appointed as the National Secretary of the women’s wing.[2] The Print reports that Gowri's social media profile has photographs of her tying rakhi on Narendra Modi and other senior BJP leaders; during the 2019 Indian general election, she took part in the Main Bhi Chowkidar campaign.[2]

Gowri started practice in 1995 and opened her own firrm, two years hence.[2] In 2015, the union government—led by BJP—appointed her as their senior standing counsel at the Madras High Court; five years later, she was recruited as an assistant solicitor general for the union government.[3]

On 17 January 2023, the Collegium of the Supreme Court of India assented to her elevation as a judge of the Madras High Court.[1] About a fortnight later, it was alleged that she had given hate speeches against religious minorities — Christians and Muslims; Gowri was noted to have propagated the Islamophobic conspiratorial theory of Love jihad and labeled Christians as "white terrorists".[4][2] On 1 February, some lawyers petitioned the President of India to withdraw her appointment and went on to file a case before the Supreme Court of India, praying for similar reliefs.[5]

On 6 February 2023, the Chief Justice of India — who heads the Collegium — constituted a two-judge bench to decide on the issue about a week later;[5] in oral remarks, he appeared to accept an ignorance of Gowri's speeches.[4][6] However, minutes after the decision, the Government accepted the Collegium's recommendation, and the Chief Justice of Madras High Court requested her to take oath, the next day.[7][5] The hearing was rescheduled and held before a bench of Bhushan Ramkrishna Gavai and Sanjay Kishan Kaul on the morning of 7 January; they dismissed the case upon an oral hearing, refusing to challenge the wisdom of the collegium by adjudicating the "suitability" of a judge.[4][8]

Gowri was sworn in simultaneous to the hearings, and she took oath before the arguments had concluded in the Supreme Court; the proceedings would have been effectively infructuos even in case of an unfavorable verdict.[4][9][lower-alpha 1] The Hindu, in its editorial, remarked that Gowri's elevation — notwithstanding an "unabashed prejudice against minorities" — highlighted the unsuitability of the closed-door collegium system to select judges in the face of political pressure.[10]