Retired judge Ranjana Prakash Desai becomes the first PCI woman chairperson
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Retired Supreme Court judge Ranjana Prakash Desai has taken charge as the head of the Press Council of India (PCI). Her appointment was formally announced by the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting on Friday.
She is the first woman to head the organisation.
72-year-old Justice Desai's name was recently cleared by a committee comprising Vice President M Venkaiah Naidu, Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla, and PCI member Prakash Dubey. The post of PCI chairperson was vacant for the past year.
The mandated three-member search committee for the selection of Prasar Bharati chairman and CEO is now complete with Desai's appointment.
She passed Bachelor of Arts from the Elphinstone College in 1970 and Bachelor of Law from Government Law College, Bombay, in 1973. She enrolled at the Bar in 1973 and practiced before the Bombay High Court.
Desai was appointed the government pleader in 1979 and later became the special public prosecutor for preventive detention matters in 1986. She became the judge of the Bombay High Court in 1996. She served as a judge on the Supreme Court from September 13, 2011, to October 29, 2014, before joining the Supreme Court.
Justice Desai was recently heading the Delimitation Commission on Jammu and Kashmir which was set up to redraw the Assembly constituencies of the Union Territory. She also chairs the five-member committee the Uttarakhand Government constituted to draft the uniform civil code.
