CHENNAI: Only she knows the sheer weight of “I, Lekshmana Chandra Victoria Gowri...” as she took oath as an additional judge of the Madras High Court. On February 7, there were rumblings outside the Madras High Court around the time the Supreme Court heard all sorts of arguments before a special bench.
There she stood, moved to the front and carried herself gracefully before chief justice T Raja. It opened a new horizon in her legal career.Even before formalities of her assuming office were complete, the Supreme Court shut doors of litigation challenging her appointment once and for all. The court stayed away from subjecting the collegium decision to the legal test.
Born in 1973 at West Neyyor in Kanyakumari district in the southernmost part of Tamil Nadu, Victoria Gowri’s father Lekshmana Chandra was an English lecturer and her mother Sarojini Chandra, a homemaker. She completed her schooling in Little Flower Girls School in Nagercoil and went on to pursue law (five-year course) at the Government Madurai Law College. She graduated in law in 1995.
Later, she pursued a post-graduate course in guidance and counselling at the Mother Teresa University in the state. She was closely associated with the BJP and its front outfits since her student days; held positions including district coordinator of Seva Bharati and was elected as a councillor to the district panchayat. She went on to become the national general secretary of the party’s women’s wing, Mahila Morcha.After enrolling with the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry in 1995, Gowri started practising in Karur and Kanyakumari districts and subsequently at the Madurai bench of the Madras High Court.
Gowri, the mother of two -- Dr TV Vasantha Bharathy and TV Soorya Gayathri -- had served as standing counsel for various Central agencies. She was appointed the assistant solicitor general of the Union government to the Madurai Bench in 2020. She held the post till she was elevated to the high court. Her husband Thulasi Muthu Ram, an engineer, works as a maintenance manager in a private firm in Nagercoil.
When her appointment was announced, a section of Left-leaning lawyers of the Madras Bar raised objections by shooting off a memorandum to the President and the collegium to recall the recommendation of the latter and knocked the doors of the apex court in vain. They had cited her public interviews and articles against the minorities and said such hate speech, antithetical to the foundational constitutional values, rendered her ineligible for her elevation as a judge.
She promptly gave them back in her acceptance speech at the oath-taking ceremony: “I am fully conscious and aware of the greatest responsibility of being a judge only to heed to the unheard voices of the poorest of the poor, to liberate the marginalised, to scuttle the abominable inequalities of the society and to nurture fraternity...”
The detractors also flagged the lightning speed, with which, the Centre cleared the files of justice Gowri while sitting on the files of advocate John Sathyan even though the collegium reiterated its decision to elevate him.
Divergent views have emerged in the bar on the collegium’s decision to elevate her to the higher judiciary. Despite the Left-leaning lawyers’ objections citing her past speech and her roots in the BJP, others refused to bother. They cite the example of justice R Chandru who had retired after an eventful stint in the Madras High Court.“Most of us had political affiliation in covert or overt manner during practice. But what matters is how we are going to perform the duties of justice delivery bound by the Constitution and law,” observes a judicial officer.