37 of 105 applicant advocates designated senior by the Supreme Court

[dropcap]T[/dropcap]HE Supreme Court of India has designated a total of 37 advocates as senior, following the procedure laid down in the landmark judgment dated October 12, 2017 of the Apex Court in Indira Jaising v. Supreme Court of India. The following are the advocates who have been designated as senior by the Supreme Court in the order given below:

1) Madhavi Goradia Divan

2) R. Balasubramanian

3) Anitha Shenoy

4) Aruneshwar Gupta

5) Jugal Kishore Tikamchand Gilda

6) Sanjay Parikh

7) Preetesh Kapur

8 ) Ashok Kumar Sharma

9) Deepak Madhusudan Nargolkar

10) Ajit Shankarrao Bhasme

11) Nikhil Nayyar

12) S. Wasim A. Qadri

13) M. G. Ramachandran

14) Manish Singhvi

15) Gopal Sankaranarayanan

16) Mohan Venkatesh Katarki

17) Nakul Dewan

18) Devadatt Kamat

19) Anip Sachthey

20) Anupam Lal Das

21) G. Venkatesh Rao

22) Jayanth Muth Raj

23) Arijit Prasad

24) Jay Savla

25) Aparajita Singh

26) Menaka Guruswamy

27) Siddhartha Dave

28) Siddharth Bhatnagar

29) C. N. Sreekumar

30) Aishwarya Bhati

31) Santosh Paul

32) Gaurav Bhatia

33) Bharat Sangal

34) Vinay Prabhakar Navare

35) Manoj Swarup

36) Ritin Rai

37) Priya Hingorani

 

Of the 37 advocates designated as senior, six are women. They are ASG Madhavi Divan, advocates Anitha Shenoy, Aparajita Singh, Menaka Guruswamy, Aishwarya Bhati and Priya Hingorani. A total of 15 women advocates had applied for the senior gown.

Of the 37 designated advocates, 17 are Advocates-on-Record in the Supreme Court.

Advocate-on-Record Chaman Lal Sahu, who was in the news for signing a PIL seeking to send Indian Muslims to Pakistan, has not been designated as senior advocate. Advocate Manohar Lal Sharma has also been denied senior designation.

The last designation of senior advocates took place in the Supreme Court in April 2015.

In a statement to The Leaflet, Senior Advocate Indira Jaising expressed her happiness with the names in the list. However, she was disappointed, she said, that there only six women in the list of 37 advocates.   

 

Background

 

On November 13, 2018, the Supreme Court had published a list of 105 advocates, who had applied for the “senior advocate” designation and sought comments, views and suggestions from stakeholders.

 

 

In 2015, Senior Advocate Indira Jaising had approached the Supreme Court seeking a fair and transparent procedure for the designation of senior advocate. A three-judge bench comprising Justices Ranjan Gogoi (current CJI), Rohinton F Nariman and Navin Sinha in a landmark judgment on October 12, 2017 had  ruled that the process of designation would be dealt with by a committee that would follow a point-based format for the assessment of applications.

 

Guidelines for designation

 

On August 6, 2018, the Supreme Court on the administrative side issued guidelines called the Supreme Court Guidelines to Regulate Conferment of Designation of Senior Advocates, 2018. This was done in compliance with the decision of the Supreme Court.

As per the guidelines, the CJI or any other judge could make a recommendation in writing if they were of the opinion that an advocate deserved to be conferred with the senior designation. The Secretariat would invite applications from retired Chief Justices and judges of the High Courts, and advocates seeking conferment of the distinction every year in the months of January and July. An Advocate-on-Record would also be eligible to apply.

 

 

The eligibility criterion for the designation is a minimum of 10 years combined standing as an advocate or a district judge, or as a judicial member of any tribunal, whose qualification for eligibility is not less than that prescribed for a district judge. Retired Chief Justices and judges are also eligible for the designation.

As per the guidelines, the applications and proposals would be published on the Supreme Court website, inviting suggestions and views of other stakeholder. The Committee would then scrutinise and assess as per a 100-point index. Post the assessment, the candidature would be sent to a Full Court for voting. However, in the case of Chief Justices and Judges of High Courts, the names would be sent directly to the Full Court.

 

Read the List of Senior Advocates

[pdfviewer]https://cdn.theleaflet.in/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/29125142/senior_advocates_as_on_29-03-2019.pdf[/pdfviewer]