Justice Gita Mittal, the first-ever female Chief Justice (CJ) of the Jammu and Kashmir High Court, has set a new benchmark with her appointment as the Chairperson of Broadcasting Content Complaints Council (BCCC). She will be assuming the office previously held by former Supreme Court Judge Justice Vikramajit Sen, whose tenure as with the BCCC has come to an end.
The Indian Broadcasting Foundation (IBF) Board of Directors confirmed her appointment to its independent, self-regulatory body for general entertainment channels. A delegation of the IBF Board, led by the Foundation’s president, K Madhavan, managing director, Star, and Disney India, invited Justice Mittal to chair the BCCC.
“I look forward to joining BCCC in its unique journey of self-regulation, which also promises to be an exciting and challenging one,” she said, according to reports in the media.
The BCCC examines content-related complaints around all non-news general entertainment channels in India. So far, the 13-member council of BCCC has mediated over 96,000 complaints regarding content-related issues. The body also helps the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting with inputs during Parliament sessions when the Members of Parliament raise any kind of questions.
Justice Mittal resigned from her office as CJ of the J&K High Court in December 2020 after serving for almost two years. Prior to this, she served as a judge in the Delhi High Court from 2004, where she was elevated to the position of Acting Chief Justice for a brief period between 2017-2018.
Justice Mittal’s career graph boasts a number of path-breaking judgments that she wrote to bring gender sensitivity to the service and recruitment in military and paramilitary forces in India. While on the Delhi High Court bench, she passed a judgment along with Justice J.R. Midha, allowing a woman with a congenital hormonal anomaly to join the Sashastra Seema Bal (a border patrol organization) as a female constable. This has been commended as a landmark decision concerning the rights of the transgender community. In 2018, she also ruled that advertisements not showcasing women applying for the Indian Territorial Army violated the Territorial Army Act, 1948, which allows both men and women to apply.
(Edited by Diya Koshy George)
