Fali Nariman

In the midst of the Supreme Court’s hearing on appeals filed by Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala against the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal’s 2007 Order yesterday (4 January), witnessed witty exchanges between Tamil Nadu’s senior counsel, Shekhar Naphade, and Karnataka’s senior counsel, Fali S. Nariman.

According to a Right to Information (RTI) response received and reported by Bar & Bench, between 1990 and 2016, the Karnataka Water Resources Department has spent at least Rs 37.5 crore on around 20 lawyers representing it in disputes such as the Cauvery battle, of which 91% (or Rs 34.22 crore) were billed by five senior lawyers alone.

6 October is likely to be the climax in the ongoing Cauvery hearing in the Supreme Court, if one were to interpret today’s outcome in Court No 4 in the afternoon.

So, how did today’s much expected hearing on the Cauvery case go in the Supreme Court?

After three hours of an intense hearing from 2pm today, the Supreme Court bench of justices Dipak Misra and UU Lalit, in an interim order, directed Karnataka to release 6,000 cusecs of water to Tamil Nadu until 27 September.

The Supreme Court’s five-judge Constitution bench judgment of 13 July, quashing president’s rule in Arunachal Pradesh, was a massive judgment in every way, and not just because it set off a series of dramatic events loaded with suspense.

Asking the Supreme Court to quash a resolution of Parliament is not a simple thing. That too in the face of eminent voices in the legal fraternity disapproving of such a plea.

The writ petition of the former Judge of the Supreme Court and former chairman of the Press Council of India, Markandey Katju, challenging the unanimous resolutions passed by both the  Houses of Parliament disapproving of his remarks on Mahatma Gandhi and Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in March last year, was heard by the Supreme Court’s three Judge bench this forenoon, with the Amicus Curiae, Fali Nariman making a snide remark about the petitioner considering himself a super citizen, by adding ‘former Judge of the Supreme Court’ etc, to his name. 

The before the Constitution bench at court number 3 at 2 pm began on a serious note with the Attorney General, Mukul Rohatgi asking the bench whether it was at all required to copy thousands of pages of official correspondence at the chief minister’s office on various trivial matters, when what the petitioners want access to, is something else. The AG also claimed that the chief minister’s office in Itanagar is not sealed, and the petitioners have not yet made any attempt to claim access to the documents which they want.

The Supreme Court’s two constitution benches in adjacent court rooms of 1 and 3 heard two governors simultaneously at 2pm today: one a former governor, and an alleged victim of political vendetta, and the other a sitting governor, who allegedly conspired with the Centre to topple a duly-elected government by recommending President’s rule.

In the midst of the melee in Court 4 on 5 November before the constitution bench hearing the proposals on reforming the collegium, counsel arguing for and against the brief adjournment, missed a crucial fact: the present collegium headed by the outgoing CJI, Justice HL Dattu, is unlikely to meet to recommend the names of new Judges, in view of Dattu’s recommendation to the government to elevate the senior-most of his colleagues, Justice TS Thakur, as the CJI, after his retirement on 2 December.

As the Supreme Court’s five-Judge Constitution Bench presided over by Justice JS Khehar began its hearing on reforming the collegium (the in-house mechanism to recruit Judges to the higher judiciary after its recent revival by the same bench) the bench sought advice from counsel on both sides on how to navigate the plethora of diverse proposals which it received.

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…

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