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NEW DELHI: Hailing from India’s first heritage village ‘Garli’ in Himachal Pradesh, the ever smiling Justice Sanjay Karol, fondly referred to as ‘Chachaji’ because of his elderly yet friendly encouragement to young lawyers, retired from the Supreme Court on Saturday leaving behind a milestone – recognising and computing the monetary value of housewives’ daily grind at homes.CJI Surya Kant, who was advocate general of Haryana when Karol was the AG of HP, revealed that as a judge of Himachal Pradesh HC, on a certain morning on way to the HC, he saw a milkman collapse on the roadside, He stopped his car, attended to him and ensure that he reached hospital and got treatment.It is Justice Karol’s compassion and empathy which was the focal point of speeches on Saturday Solicitor general Tushar Mehta said Justice Karol was a saintly judge, an unapologetic believer, a god-loving man and a judge who said ‘sorry’ to the litigant against whom he delivered judgment. He said he was the torch-bearer of encouragement to young lawyers, nearly 500 of whom he had appointed as amicus curiae to help them grow in profession by getting the opportunity to argue cases in the highest court.He became a judge of HP HC on March 8, 2007 and was appointed chief justice of Tripura HC on Nov 14, 2018. For the next four years and three months he remained CJ of HCs, one of the longest before a HC judge’s elevation to the Supreme Court. While functioning as CJ of Patna HC, he had arranged food for many during the Covid pandemic period.But what stood out in his judicial career is his June 11, 2026 pioneering judgment that notionally computed the income of a housewives for determination of compensation in a case where a woman died in a motor vehicle accident in 2001.
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Drawing a linear chart of their contributions in household work and its direct relationship with GDP, he had said in the judgment that “Apart from the fact that contribution of women to the society extends far beyond biological reproduction, they are also largely responsible for the preparation of human capital on which the dreams of being the world’s largest economy among other things rest. It is often said that a mother is the first teacher that a child has. This teaching however is not like a school or a college, that has a definite end date and instead continues for the entire lives of both the mother and the child.” The SC said it is conservatively computing the homemaker’s monthly income at Rs 30,000 per month and awarded a compensation of Rs 63 lakhs to her relatives as against Rs 8 lakhs awarded by the HC.
