Bar, Bench & Litigation

The Supreme Court collegium has recommended to the Madras high court bench who would probably be the first of a modern Indian law firm’s partners, as well as the second-ever NLSIU Bangalore graduate.

Indian lawyers listing their profiles on a number of websites, apps and aggregators are guilty of “surrogate advertising”, Bhasin & Co managing partner Lalit Bhasin told the Hindustan Times in an article headlined “Law firms’ body seeks ban on apps, websites offering legal services”, with a nutgraf of “The Bar Council says the practice is equivalent to surrogate advertising”.

Following the London Court of International Arbitration (LCIA) India shutting its India operations in April 2016, its former registrar Ajay Thomas has moved to LCIA rival, the International Chamber of Commerce (ICC) International Court of Arbitration (ICA) in a part-time role.

The Delhi high court has agreed to hear advocate _Deepak Khosla_’s appeal for video recording of all court proceedings in the high court, after it had initially dismissed the plea in August 2011 and again in July 2017 with Rs 20,000 costs that Khosla said he would not be paying.

Senior advocate Abhishek Manu Singhvi said at an event as reported by The Hindu that “broadly” the judiciary was “very independent”, though it occasionally submits to political pressure.

A WhatsApp forward has been going around of a billboard in Tiz Hazari court with pictures of more than 40 lawyers who had allegedly appeared in court on Thursday and Friday (11 and 12 October) in defiance of Delhi bar associations' call for a lawyers' strike in the national capital.

The Supreme Court’s collegium of Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dipak Misra and the next senior-most judges, justices J Chelameswar, Ranjan Gogoi, Madan B Lokur and Kurian Joseph, have begun to post recommendations for elevations and other business on a new ‘resolutions of the collegium’ section of its website according to minutes dated 3 October.

The tax on all types of legal services provided by all classes of lawyers will be borne by clients, the finance ministry has finally settled in an official notification, as first published by Live Law.

"The Supreme Court on Monday criticised the bar association of the Gurgaon district courts for passing a resolution calling upon lawyers to not defend the accused in the murder of a sevenyear-old student at Ryan International School. A three-judge bench, led by Chief Justice Dipak Misra, warned local lawyers against preventing the advocates of the accused from appearing in court and defending them," reported the Economic Times.

A judge of the Punjab & Haryana high court stayed the result of the Haryana Judicial Services (HJS) Exam after allegations of cheating against the topper of the exam. Immediately after his order the case was taken away from him, for unexplained reasons, at the request of the recruitment committee of the high court, reported Live Law.

Justice Dipak Misra took oath today as the 45th Chief Justice of India (CJI), succeeding CJI JS Khehar. Misra's suitability for India's highest judicial office was questioned before CJI Khehar and in the media, since last year when his name surfaced in allegations of misrepresentation from 1979.

Supreme Court advocate on record (AOR) _ Nandini Gore_ has complained about the state of the ladies restroom in the Jharkhand high court, in a letter to the HC's chief justice DN Patel, which was followed by a public interest litigation by the HCs bar association citing Gore's letter, reported The Telegraph.

The Delhi high court has asked the lower court judge who had granted bail to Unitech's promoters in April to retire early effective yesterday.

The government has moved for an early hearing in the Bar Council of India (BCI) AK Balaji appeal in the Supreme Court, reported Bar & Bench.

Legal services are not exempt from payment of Goods and Services Tax (GST) applicable on them, under the GST's reverse charge mechanism, the government clarified on Saturday, 15 July.