senior advocates

The Times of India’s (TOI) report on an anonymous “tormented” litigant’s complaint to the Chief Justice of India (CJI), about Delhi high court justice Gita Mittal’s “tardy disposal” of cases, has earned flak from 34 Delhi senior advocates who have written a letter to the newspaper demanding an “unconditional apology”.

Senior advocates are now temporarily outside the service tax net, as the Delhi high court today stayed the imposition of this tax on them, reported Mint.

Justices S Muralidhar and RK Gauba ordered the stay on the Delhi High Court Bar Association’s (DHCBA) plea that charging senior advocates on the services they provide to their clients, as well as charging the clients on the services they take from senior advocates, amounts to double taxation and is unconstitutional.

The stay order was passed in order to maintain consistency with a similar stay order by the Guajarat high court on 30 March, according to Mint.

The DHCBA had also contended that the function of senior advocates – aiding the court in administration of justice – is not a “taxable service”, according to Live Law which published a copy of the DHCBA’s petition in the Delhi high court.

The union budget 2016 had withdrawn the exemption provided to senior advocates from service tax, effectively increasing the cost of instructing them by 14 per cent, as reported by [legallyindia.com/news/budget-catches-senior-advocates-tribunals-with-wider-service-tax-net

The budget provisions which had taken away the senior advocates’ exemption were to be effective from today. Previous unsuccessful attempts of the government to levy service tax on lawyers came in 2011 and 2012.

Bar Council of India (BCI) member S Prabhakaran and 11 other Madras advocates are now senior advocates in the Madras high court, reported the Times of India.

NL Rajah, R Vaigai, Sathish Parasaran, A Sirajudeen, Isaac Mohanlal, R Singaravelan, TP Manoharan, Veera Kathiravan, Karthik, Anand and Xavier Arulraj are the other new senior advocates part of this round of designations in the high court.

This is the first batch of senior designations affected under the new senior designation norms that exist since 2013. Before 2013, advocates could simply nominate themselves for their own designation and if two-thirds of the full court of judges voted in favour of such nomination, the designation was complete. Under the new norms, only advocates who are invited to nominated themselves for the designation, are eligible to apply.

Additionally, only those advocates can be invited who have at least Rs 7 lakh as income tax returns for three previous financial years and publication of a minimum of 15 judgments in reputed law journals.

After this round, the Bar Council of Tamil Nadu and Puducherry will have 122 senior advocates on its rolls, according to a statement by the state bar council’s chairman D Selvam to TOI

Protesting the transfer order of Delhi high court justice Rajiv Shakdher to the Madras high court, prominent senior advocates in Delhi have written to the Supreme Court collegium requesting it to reverse the order.

The Bar Council of Kerala will now start constructing the MK Nambyar Academy for Continuing Legal Education, as its foundation stone was laid by Chief Justice of India (CJI) TS Thakur yesterday, reported The Hindu.

At the inauguration ceremony, CJI Thakur defended the high litigation fees charged by Supreme Court lawyers and said that these top Indian lawyers also take up many cases pro bono. Legally India and Mint revealed 42 Delhi senior advocates’ fees last year.

Thakur said that the legal profession should not only bring recognition to its practitioners but should be a rewarding one as well. He also said that continuing legal education will empower lawyers to be more effective in the conduct of their cases, and to do justice to the profession.

The leader of the opposition party in the state VS Achuthanandan said that steps should be taken to end the practice of lawyers collecting high fees from clients.

Supreme Court justice Kurian Joseph who was also present at the inauguration, said that the practice of law graduates taking professional oath en-masse should be replaced with them taking oath in the presence of a high court judge so that they “would consider the profession seriously”, reported the New Indian Express.

The Supreme Court has designated 12 new senior advocates including eight retired high court (HC) judges and four advocates-on-record, three of whom are women.

Retired justices SN Aggarwal and Rakesh Chandra Mishra from the Madhya Pradesh HC, Ashok Kumar Roopanwal and Yogendra Kumar Sangal from the Allahabad HC, Parthasakha Datta from the Calcutta HC, PR Raman from the Kerala HC, G Bhavani Prasad from the Andhra Pradesh HC and Vinod K Sharma from the Andhra Pradesh HC in addition to the four reported former advocates-on-record have been designated on 3 September.

Out of the four advocates on record three are women, as was reported by the Times of India last week.

The Supreme Court yesterday decided to designate women advocates Vibha Dutta Makhija, Meenakshi Arora and Kiran Suri as senior advocates by a unanimous decision of a full court, reported the Times of India. Advocate Sushil Jain was also designated a senior in the same meeting.

This is the first time in SC history that a list of designated seniors has male lawyers in the minority. The full court rejected the Supreme Court Bar Association's (SCBA) request to defer consideration of names for the senior designation.

Makhija and Arora are part of the seven-member Gender Sensitisation and Internal Complaints Committee that was recently set up by the SC.

At least five Supreme Court judges have to now agree to the candidature of an advocate to be designated as a senior by the court, reportedly under new rules.

The Delhi high court had in March designated five new seniors including two women, as reported by Legally India.

Correction: An earlier version of this story had wrongly mentioned that not Kiran Suri but Sushma Suri had been designated as a senior, relying on an erroneous Times of India report we linked to. This has been corrected after the Supreme Court released the full list of senior designated in September, online.

Former Supreme Court chief justice AH Ahmadi’s son advocate Huzefa Ahmadi, and former additional advocate general of Tamil Nadu Guru Krishnakumar were designated senior advocates by the Supreme Court of India with effect from 21 November.

Following convention, 15 judges from various high courts were also designated seniors.

Out of the high courts, four judges from Allahabad, three from Kerala, two from Patna, and one each from Andhra Pradesh, Punjab & Haryana, Bombay, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat were designated.

Legally India Supreme Court postcard writer Court Witness said that if retired high court judges applied for the senior counsel designation, usually they would automatically be granted the title. [List of new senior advocates]