Pune

Juris Corp partner Hitesh Jain and his team, as well as recently-exited J Sagar Associates (JSA) partner Ravichandra Hegde, are setting up a new law firm, with offices in Mumbai, Pune and Delhi.

Bombay solicitors firm Solomon & Co has expanded to Pune after 109 years of operations only from Mumbai.

Pune University 2008 alumnus Sahil Tagotra and Symbiosis Pune 2009 alumnus Deepayan Mandal topped the Advocate on Record (AOR) exam this year. The pass rate dropped to 24%, from nearly 30% last year.

BMR & Associates Delhi indirect tax head partner Puneet Bansal left the firm on 15 June with BMR associate director Kulraj Ashpnani, to start up his independent indirect tax boutique Nitya Tax Associates, said Ashpnani.

Bansal, who started his legal career at Lakshmikumaran & Sridharan (LKS) in May 2003, as a chartered accountant in the firm’s disputes practice, went on to pursue his LLB from 2004 to 2007 at Delhi University. He left LKS in 2012 to join BMR & Associates as a partner.

Ashpnani who joined BMR from ELP in October 2013 is an associate partner at Nitya.

Nitya is based in Delhi and will service clients on indirect tax matters and related disputes.

Senior associates Nanditha Gopal and Percis Anklesaria will be promoted to partner.

DSK Legal has doubled its office space in Pune within six months of opening up in the city, on the back of new large local corporate client accounts.

DSK Legal has opened up in Pune, taking its national presence to four offices. The Pune office will be headed by Mumbai corporate partner Narendra Dingankar and will cater to corporate and real estate clients.

Pune has been declared one of Maharashtra’s four official bar All India Bar Exam (AIBE) centres, after the Bar Council of India (BCI) acceded to the “persistent and convincing demands” of the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa’s demands over the last two months [Pune Mirror]

Pune has been without its own test centre since the start of the AIBE, as previously reported by Legally India.

Exclusive: Advaya Legal, the two-and-a-half-year-old firm started by former GVK in-houser Ramesh Vaidyanathan, has hired its third partner with ex-BG in-house counsel Smriti Subramanian, as the firm hopes to spread its footprint beyond Mumbai.

Exclusive: Lakshmi Kumaran & Sridharan (LKS) has opened a second office in Delhi and a new office in Pune, taking its total number of offices to seven and number of lawyers to 250.

Exclusive: Amarchand Mangaldas will launch in Chennai by March with Kochhar & Co Chennai head Dorothy Thomas, followed by re-opening in Ahmedabad with a Pune office pegged for the latter end of this year.

Pune could get a division bench of the Bombay High Court said law minister Veerappa Moily.

The government post-budget notifications to tax new services and amend taxation of existing ones have taken effect today, particularly impacting sectors such as aviation, construction and hospital services while retrospective service tax imposition on rentals of immovable property and commercial coaching could increase litigation.

Khaitan & Co legacy firm Khaitan Jayakar Sud and Vohra (KJSV) has inducted two salaried partners, promoting Tanuj Sud in Delhi and hiring Sudhakar Avadh as the partner in charge of its new Pune office while gearing up for further national expansion.

The first ballot boxes were unsealed for electronic counting yesterday at the Bar Council offices near Bombay High Court, kicking off the long count to find the winners of the Bar Council of Maharashtra and Goa elections.

Advani & Company is representing the family of India's first H1N1 virus victim against the Pune hospitals it alleges had caused her death.