The Supreme Court changed the process for selecting and appointing Senior Advocates by the upper judiciary on Wednesday.In response to a request by Senior Advocate Indira Jaising for consistent marking based on years of experience, a Bench of Justices UU Lalit, Ravindra Bhat, and PS Narasimha granted the relief.
“Instead of 10 marks to be alloted to a counsel who has put in 10-20 years of practice, the marks be allotted commensurate with the standing of the person at the bar. This modification shall be effectively from the date of this order. The other prayers will be taken up on Thursday.”
The Court was hearing complaints that some High Courts were using “arbitrary and discriminatory” secret vote as a standard for awarding senior status on lawyers.
Jaising had approached the Supreme Court to clarify if such voting is in violation of the court’s previous ruling in Indira Jaising v. Supreme Court of India.According to the petition filed in Jaising’s 2017 lawsuit, the High Courts of Delhi and Punjab & Haryana classified lawyers as Senior Advocates in a manner that was inconsistent with the 2017 verdict.
It was pointed out that even after a candidate’s marks were allocated by the Committee established under the individual High Court Senior Designation Rules, each and every candidate was placed to a vote by the Full Court.
“It is humbly submitted that this frustrates that very purpose of having a committee, a marking system and cut off marks and brings back the subjective element in the matter of designation.”
As a result, even those who met the High Court’s cut-off marks were unable to be designated because they lacked the required number of votes, Jaising contended in her appeal.
The Bench said on Wednesday that it would wait for the Solicitor General’s response before commenting on the case. However, it stated that there was no reason to postpone one of Jaising’s prayers about experience marks at the Bar.
The Bench agreed with her that under the current scheme of evaluating applicants for senior positions, there may be lawyers with 17 or 19 years of experience, but both will be given 10 points, while those with more than 20 years of experience will all be given 20 points.
The Bench granted the Central government until May 9 to respond, and the matter will be heard on May 12 after Solicitor General Tushar Mehta requested time since the entire process might need to be reconsidered.
Other parties’ counsel will have two days to respond to the SG’s submissions, according to the ruling.
In her petition, Jaising argued that the designation procedure is a selection of persons who are deserving of designation, and that such merit should not be decided by a vote of the Full Court because this is not an election to an office.
She said that the Supreme Court’s 2017 decision made it plain that voting should only be used if it was unavoidable. “It is obvious that the decision to designate is not based on the merits of the candidate but on the personal preferences of the judges who vote in favour of or against a candidate,” Jaising stated in the appeal, when every candidate was put to vote, and that too by secret ballot with no discussion.
“If voting is the decisive factor as it seems to be, the marking system as laid down in the above mentioned objective criteria table becomes of no consequence. This is evident from the following chart which indicated that even those who obtained the cut off marks did not get the requisite number of votes and hence were not designated by the Honourable High Court of Delhi.”
Apart from this explanation, the application requested that the Court determine the uniform minimum number of marks that a candidate must receive in order to be classified as a Senior Advocate.