Dushyant Dave

The Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) has released its final list of candidates, after the phase of withdrawal of names is over. 

Angry exchanges between senior advocate Kapil Sibal, representing the social activist Teesta Setalvad and her husband, Javed Anand, and the Solicitor General, Ranjit Kumar, marked the hearing before Court No 3 at 2pm before justices Anil R Dave, Fakkir Mohammed Ibrahim Kalifulla and V Gopala Gowda.£££para£££

The Supreme Court on Friday sought a response from the central and Kerala governments on a public interest suit seeking immediate halt to the killing of street dog by Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation.

Notice has also been issued to Thiruvananthapuram Municipal Corporation.

A bench of Justice Dipak Misra and Justice Prafulla C Pant sought the response of the governments and the civic body as as public interest petitioner Anupam Tripathi described as illegal and cruel the killing of the street and stray dogs.

Having issued notice returnable in two weeks, the court asked senior counsel Dushyant Dave to assist the court in the matter as it directed next hearing of the matter on 26 October.

Tripathi told the court that the decision to cull the stray dogs was against the provisions of the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, the Animal Birth Control Rules and the other penal provisions.

The culling of the stray dogs is being carried out following an all-party meeting 9 July, with Chief Minister Oommen Chandy in the chair, where it was decided eliminate more than 2.5 lakh street dogs.

The post colonial-era building with the red sandstone dome on Delhi’s Bhagwaan Dass Road is home to an elite class of lawyers, who are likely to be the most expensive in the world: they are typically paid between Rs 5 and 15 lakh per hearing.

Interviews by Legally India with more than 32 Delhi lawyers who brief seniors in the Supreme Court and Delhi high court reveal all…

In the wake of the bar’s stand-off with the Supreme Court bench, the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) of the “committee to oversee implementation of suggestions by SCBA” and a letter by SCBA president Dushyant Dave.

After in August 2013 banning interns from its premises on Mondays and Fridays - miscellaneous days - in order to fight overcrowding, the Supreme Court now plans to ban interns from entering the “high security” zone inside the court for security reasons.

The process of appointing senior advocates is broken and no one has bothered to fix it, until now.

Politics are in full swing at the SCBA again after yesterday’s meeting.

LiveLaw reported that Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) president Dushyant Dave said at the general body meeting today, in which he had threatened to vote on a boycott of official functions at the Supreme Court attended by judges, that the bench had apparently listened to his demands, including for better infrastructure.

LiveLaw reported Dave saying:

We will celebrate Independence Day and Law Day functions without inviting any of the dignitaries. Today Mr. Venugopal and Mr. Kapil Sibal met me and asked whether they could mediate. I said we are not going to go to the Judges but if they could intervene it is more than welcome.

They met CJI at 10.20 am and the CJI [HL Dattu] has now constituted a Committee. This GBM is now Postponed for 6 weeks for the Committee to address our grievances. If they are not intervening, we’ll again meet and pass the Resolution. This acknowledgement is the beginning of the restoration of our dignity.

Justices Anil R Dave, JS Kehar, Dipak Misra, RF Nariman and UU Lalit will be heading the committee.

Dave had come under fire from other senior advocates such as Ram Jethmalani and PP Rao for his proposed action.

Update: Several senior Supreme Court advocates have criticised Dave’s proposal of following “Mahatma Gandhi’s principle of Non-Cooperation” for Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) members to boycott official functions that include Supreme Court judges.

Senior advocate Dushyant Dave has won the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) 2014 elections, with V Shekhar winning the vice-president race.

The Bombay Lawyers Association wrote to Chief Justice of India RM Lodha about an incident alleged by senior counsel Dushyant Dave in March about Supreme Court Justice CK Prasad hearing and deciding on a property matter listed before another bench himself: "We expected some response to our letter but unfortunately our expectations were belied. It is possible that at the end of his tenure, Chief Justice Sathasivam was hard-pressed for time and could not give the necessary attention to our request." [DNA]

Senior advocate Dushyant Dave wrote to the Chief Justice of India questioning the propriety of a Supreme Court two-judge bench headed by justice CK Prasad which took away a matter listed before a three-judge bench, and decided the matter itself, reported the Times of India yesterday.

Prasad and justice Pinaki Ghose’s bench had in January passed suo motu orders tagging a Cidco golf course tender case to, allegedly, an unrelated criminal appeal it was hearing.

He said the it was “disturbing” how the hearing was “inexplicably snatched from a three-judge bench authorized to hear it”.

Dave, in his letter, said the issue raised a number of questions:

“Why was the bench headed by Justice Prasad so keen to hear the land matter in such unnatural haste in violation of judicial propriety and decorum? How did it learn of it? Could it have, suo motu, with any lawyer or party requesting its tagging, tag it? In any case, the matters were unrelated, as senior counsel C U Singh who appeared in the criminal case had informed Justice Prasad who agreed, but said the common factor was Cidco.”

The letter added, “What was the SC registry doing? Couldn't it have checked the matters were unconnected? After accepting and de-tagging it, ought not the matter to have been sent to the regular bench?”