The Verdictum: G Rohini, Chief Justice of Delhi High Court

Justice Gorla Rohini was sworn in as Chief Justice of the Delhi High Court on April 21, 2014. She retired on April 13, after a tenure of almost three years, or 1088 days in charge..She obtained her degree from Andhra University’s College of Law and enrolled as an advocate in 1980. She served as a Government Pleader, before being elevated as an additional judge of the High Court of Judicature at Hyderabad in 2001..Rohini J was made permanent the following year, and spent twelve years in the AP High Court before her transfer..Month-wise distribution of rulings.During her tenure at the Delhi High Court, Justice Rohini was involved in the passing of 562 reported orders and judgments, as of March 31, 2017. She had authored 174 of these..Her most productive month was July, during which she passed a total of 84 rulings. To put that in perspective, that is almost one ruling per day in the month of July. The month of May was also productive, with 66 rulings. Her least productive month was October, during which he made a mere 18 rulings..Day-wise productivity.Justice Rohini’s average daily productivity hovered around the 0.5 rulings per day mark, going as high as 0.9 rulings per day in July and plummeting to 0.19 rulings per day in October..Year-wise distribution of rulings.Justice Rohini’s most productive year was her second year in office, 2015, during which she made 206 rulings. She made only 130 rulings during 2016, the penultimate year as Chief Justice..YearNo. of rulings201418620152062016130201740.Bench-wise distribution of rulings.Rohini J delivered more than half of her rulings (316) sitting with Justice Rajiv Sahai Endlaw. She also sat with Justice Jayant Nath for 159 rulings. She once headed a three-judge bench of the High Court..Case-type distribution of rulings.The majority of the cases in which she delivered orders and judgments were Letters Patent Appeal (254) and Civil Writ Petitions (248). She also ruled on 37 FAOs and 4 Chartered Accountancy References..Notable judgments.In Cellular Operators Association of India And Ors v. Telecom Regulatory Authority Of India & Ors, she was part of the bench that upheld the validity of the Telecom Consumer Protection (Ninth Amendment) Regulations, 2015, which made telcos liable to pay their customers for call drops..In August 2016, she ruled on a number of petitions dealing with the Executive and Legislative control of the Delhi NCT government. She also ruled in the case challenging the banning of India’s Daughter, the documentary on the Nirbhaya case..In Nyayaa Path (NGO) v. Lt. Governor of Delhi and Ors, she made a ruling regarding advertisements of political parties..In Karmanya Singh Sareen v. Union of India – the case that challenged Whatsapp’s User Policy – she was part of the bench that held that Whatsapp shall not share its users’ details with Facebook or any one of its group companies..Most recently, she was part of the bench that overruled a single judge bench decision holding that the office of the Attorney General of India comes under the scope of the Right to Information Act, 2005..Image taken from here.