Justice Sunita Agarwal: 21 years at the Allahabad Bar, then the Supreme Court

Elevated from the Bar in 2011 and Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court since July 2023, Justice Agarwal is the third woman on the sitting Supreme Court bench.

Justice Sunita Agarwal, who took oath as a judge of the Supreme Court on 6 October 2026, reaches the Court after 21 years at the Allahabad Bar and a little over three years as Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court. She was elevated from the Bar, not from judicial service: the Allahabad High Court's own record lists her source of appointment as "Bar".

Enrolment and practice

Born on 30 April 1966, Justice Agarwal graduated in law from Awadh University in 1989 and enrolled as an advocate on 16 December 1990. She practised on the civil side at the Allahabad High Court until her elevation, appearing in civil, writ, original and commercial matters.

Allahabad High Court

She was elevated as an Additional Judge of the Allahabad High Court on 21 November 2011 and took oath as a permanent judge on 6 August 2013. She served at Allahabad until 22 July 2023. During that tenure she sat on a bench that quashed detention orders passed under the National Security Act against protesters arrested over the anti-CAA and NRC demonstrations in 2021, and on a seven-judge bench that framed contempt charges in 2023 against office-bearers of the Kanpur bar association over a strike (ThePrint).

Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court

Justice Agarwal took oath as Chief Justice of the Gujarat High Court on 23 July 2023, the second woman to head that Court. Her bench took suo motu cognisance of the alleged sexual harassment of a student at Gujarat National Law University in September 2023, and of the Harni lake boat tragedy in January 2024, in which 12 schoolchildren and two teachers died. On 29 September 2026, a division bench she led dismissed Arvind Kejriwal's appeal in the proceedings over disclosure of the Prime Minister's educational records under the Right to Information Act, and upheld the costs of Rs 25,000 imposed on him (ThePrint).

ThePrint reports, citing Manupatra data, that she authored 313 judgments at the Gujarat High Court and disposed of about 11,129 cases in three years and two months as Chief Justice.

Justice Agarwal is the third woman on the sitting Supreme Court bench. She is due to retire on 29 April 2031, the longest remaining tenure of the three judges sworn in on 6 October 2026.