Sridharan told Legally India: “I dedicate it to my team who’ve supported me for the last 25 years; without them it wouldn’t have been possible.”

He added that his elevation would be of benefit to Lakshmi Kumaran and Sridharan and that he hoped “more and more lawyers from our firm to be designated as senior advocates”.

But one Bombay High Court advocate commented that the process of designating senior counsel should be improved. “A lot of people feel that the procedure should be merit-based and transparent,” he said, adding that Mumbai lagged far behind Delhi in elevation numbers.

This is backed up by the figures. According to exclusive research published by Legally India earlier this year, since 2005 an average of only three advocates were promoted per year in the Bombay High Court while Delhi’s average rate since 2008 has been more than 10 per year (see graph right).

And over the last 20 years only three Bombay-based female advocates were promoted to senior counsel – one in 1998 and two in 2006 – a ratio that has with the latest batch sunk to just over 3 per cent out of 96 senior counsel. In Delhi, with 122 new senior counsel in the last 20 years but only three women, the odds are stacked even more highly against women with a designation percentage of just 2.4 per cent. In February of this year the Delhi High Court designated 10, including two women.

It is understood that roughly 100 Mumbai advocates were on the ballot that was voted on by the judges this year. But according to one Mumbai-based lawyer there was no proper system in place, with an application system that was little understood or followed, while lobbying and having an influential senior raised one’s chances of becoming designated.

Full list of new 2011 Bombay senior counsel:

• V Sridharan
• Shrikrishna Narhar Inamdar
• Soli Khurshed Cooper
• Subodh Shrikanta Kantak
• Sunil Vyankatesh Manohar “Arunodaya”
• Shyam Anil Mehta
• Shailesh Sanat Shah
• Venkatesh Raghunath Dhond
• Ketan Dhirendra Parikh
• Shiraz Peshotan Rustomjee
• Kevic Anant Setalvad
• Keshav Malu Naik
• Joaquim F Reis
• Rajiv Mahendranath Kumar
• Anand Kishen Grover

Source: Bombay High Court

• Click here for more about the odds of making senior counsel.