MBA felicitates Justice V. Mohana, first woman from Tamil Nadu to be elevated directly to Supreme Court

The Madras Bar Association (MBA) on Monday felicitated Justice V. Mohana for being the first woman hailing from Tamil Nadu to be elevated directly as a judge of the Supreme Court.

Justice Mohana also inaugurated an MBA Endowment Lecture Series, in memory of M.K. Nambyar, V.P. Raman, R. Krishnamoorthy, and M. Subramaniam, the four doyens of the Madras Bar, in the presence of Madras High Court Chief Justice Sushrut Arvind Dharmadhikari and his companion judges.

The Supreme Court judge said M.K. Nambyar was an example of how even a trial lawyer could rise to become a “constitutional visionary”. She said the seeds of the Constitution’s most popular ‘basic structure’ doctrine were actually sown by Mr. Nambyar, the grandfather of Advocate-General Vijay Narayan.

She also said V.P. Raman, father of former Advocate-General P.S. Raman, was a “brilliant lawyer” who still holds the record of having been the youngest Advocate-General of Tamil Nadu and the first south Indian to be appointed as an Additional Solicitor General.

“Mr. Krishamoorthy was the leader of the Bar and he was a well-known gentleman lawyer, who was twice Advocate-General in two different dispensations. It is a rare honour and we can see that now happening again with our present Advocate-General, Mr. Vijay Narayan,” Justice Mohana said.

She also hailed Mr. Subramaniam as a very methodical man who inculcated all the values, which he imbibed from his senior Govind Swaminathan, to his juniors, and said she was happy to learn that his son Arvind Subramaniam was now practising at the Madras High Court.

MBA president V.R. Kamalanathan and secretary J. Pothiraj also spoke.