Senior Advocate Indira Jaising recently revealed that she has received many complaints from women judges about sexual harassment by their male colleagues.

"In the course of my experience, I have had to deal with women judges. I have represented a lot of women judges. These women judges have come to me with complaints about sexual harassment by male judges, which is why I did write in my book that sexual harassment is the dirty secret of the judiciary of India. No one wants to talk about it."

She was speaking at the 29th D.S. Borker Memorial Lecture on 'My Vision of India: 2047 A.D".

Jaising stated that the reason why such sexual harassment cases happen is because of embedded hierarchy in the judicial system. She shared an incident where she represented a woman judge who had faced sexual harassment, and said: "This woman judge I was representing told me that when a High Court retires, women District Court judges are asked to line up, wear sarees of the same colour, and throw flowers at all the male judges who walk past entering into the dining room. This is the practice of the higher judiciary."

Condemning such practices, she added: "The High Court and Supreme Court judges expect this from District Court judges, and it has devastating consequences most particularly for women judges and same woman judge who told me this faced sexual harassment by a judge who told her 'come to my 25th wedding anniversary party and dance on an "item number" which she resisted for which she lost her job."

She hoped that such embarrassing things would end by 2047.

Jaising spoke after Senior Advocate Dr S Muralidhar gave a lecture on this topic, during which he addressed a wide range of issues, from judicial delays to students' protests. Muralidhar had also spoken against such hierarchical and feudalistic practices prevailing in the judiciary. He stated that there are growing instances of women judges facing the trauma of sexual innuendo and harassment at the hands of senior male colleagues.

Expressing broad agreement with what Muralidhar said, Jaising, however, differed on where the Court's time is spent most. She stated that whatever little time should have been available to ordinary litigants is mostly consumed by the "rich and the corporate world".

Jaising concluded by answering a question that, she said, Gen Z most frequently asks her: what gives her hope that things will change for the better?Answering this, she said that it is the Constitution of India that gives her hope. She said: "...so long as we as citizens are able to prevent the ruling party from changing the Constitution of India, there is hope. Because so long as the Constitution of India stays at it is, there is no single of this government which is extra constitutional which can't' be challenged. So we know that attempts are being made to change the Constitution itself. The means through which this is being done are very clear. The linking of delimitation exercise with women reservation, very act of delimitation without any legal assurance that the federal system will remain in place, the idea of having one nation, one election- these are destructive ideas of the Constitution of India."

Jaising also spoke against the recent trends of assigning party symbols to rebel factions of the political parties in order to bring down the representation of the Opposition in the Parliament or increasing the "magic number" to change the Constitution.