All government respondents have formally filed their representations through senior counsels in the Chennai writ petition case against foreign law firms when the matter was listed for hearing on 9 June after the end of one month of Madras High Court vacations on 7 June.

The matter came up before the first bench comprising of the acting chief justice Elipe Dharma Rao and justice T S Sivagnanam placed as item number 40 on the cause list.

Senior government counsel P Chandrasekaran was representing respondents number one to six, which are the various government departments of law, home affairs, finance, external affairs and income tax and the Reserve Bank of India.

Senior counsels K Venkatakrishnan and S Y Masood filed to defend respondent number seven and eight, which are the Bar Council of India and the State Bar Council of Tamil Nadu respectively.

At the procedural hearing at 1 pm on Wednesday 9 June the respondents’ counsels sought four weeks to submit their written replies before the court after registering appearance and filing their Vakalatnamas (authorisation letter).

Advocates S R Ezhilarasan and Karthikeyan who assist senior counsel A R L Sundersan appeared for the petitioner A K Balaji.

The Tamil Nadu’s Women Lawyers Association, which had earlier joined as petitioner through a separate application, was represented by its president D Prasanna and advocate V Alamelu.

As previously reported on Legally India, the bar association of the Madras High Court was also planning to be impleaded as one of the petitioners.

The public interest litigation (PIL) has been bogged down by court delays and has not made much progress since it was originally filed on 18 March this year when Government respondents were issued notices.

The named foreign law firms and the sole-named LPO will be issued notices subsequent to and dependent on the first eight respondents’ written submissions.