The Supreme Court has designated 56 advocates including 11 women as Senior Advocates on friday.
It was after the committee headed by Chief Justice of India (CJI) DY Chandrachud interviewed over 200 applicants for the senior gown that the designations were given.
The gowns were conferred on 56 lawyers who are:
1. Gaurav Agrawal, Advocate-on-Record
2. Shobha Gupta, Advocate-on-Record
3. Sitesh Mukherjee, Advocate
4. Amit Anand Tiwari, Advocate-on-Record
5. Saket Singh, Advocate
6. Amar Pradeepbhai Dave (Amar Pradeep Dave), Advocate
7. Devashish Bharuka, Advocate-on-Record
8. Swarupama Chaturvedi, Advocate-on-Record
9. Dr. Aman Mohit Hingorani, Advocate-on-Record
10. Abhinav Mukerji, Advocate-on-Record
11. Saurabh Mishra, Advocate-on-Record
12. Nikhil Goel, Advocate-on-Record
13. Sunil Fernandes, Advocate-on-Record
14. Sujit Kumar Ghosh, Advocate
15. Shikhil Shiv Madhu Suri, Advocate
16. Liz Mathew (Anthraper), Advocate-on-Record
17. Sanjay Upadhyay, Advocate
18. Sudhanshu Shashikumar Choudhari, Advocate-on-Record
19. Karuna Nundy, Advocate
20. Pratap Venugopal, Advocate-on-Record
21. Gagan Gupta, Advocate-on-Record
22. Raghenth B (Raghenth Basant), Advocate
23. Tapesh Kumar Singh, Advocate-on-Record
24. Nisha Bagchi, Advocate
25. Rauf Rahim, Advocate-on-Record
26. PB Suresh, Advocate-on-Record
27. Uttara Babbar, Advocate-on-Record
28. Dr. Joseph Aristotle S, Advocate-on-Record
29. Sridhar Potaraju, Advocate-on-Record
30. Haripriya Padmanabhan, Advocate
31. Dr. KB Sounder Rajan, Advocate-on-Record
32. G. Saikumar, Advocate
33. Anand Sanjay M. Nuli, Advocate
34. Senthil Jagadeesan (Senthil J.), Advocate-on-Record
35. Deeptendra Narayan Ray, Advocate
36. Mohd. Shoeb Alam, Advocate-on-Record
37. Pijush Kanti Roy, Advocate
38. Archana Pathak Dave, Advocate-on-Record
39. NS Nappinai, Advocate
40. Anil Kaushik, Advocate
41. S Janani, Advocate-on-Record
42. Naresh Kaushik, Advocate
43. Ananda Padmanabhan, Advocate
44. Dr. Jose Porathur, Advocate
45. Uday Gupta, Advocate
46. Shridhar Yeshwant Chitale, Advocate
47. Anant Vijay Palli, Advocate
48. Rupesh Kumar, Advocate-on-Record
49. Sanjay Vasantrao Kharde, Advocate
50. V Prabhakar, Advocate
51. Abhijeet Sinha, Advocate
52. Arvind Kumar Sharma, Advocate
53. Shailesh Madiyal, Advocate-on-Record
54. Shirin Khajuria, Advocate-on-Record
55. Raghavendra S Srivatsa, Advocate-on-Record
56. Ardhendumauli Kumar Prasad, Advocate-on-Record
It was in the year 2021, when the senior gown was designated in 18 lawyers.
The Court had conferred senior gown on retired High Court judges including Justice Talwant Singh,Justice Dr. S Muralidhar and Justice PN Prakash in May 2022 and October 2023, though no lawyers were given the gown in that round of designations.
Last year, the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) had in August last year, urged the CJI and other Supreme Court judges to adopt a liberal approach while designating deserving and meritorious advocates as Senior Advocates.
At the time, the association had emphasized that due to a judicial challenge, coupled with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the senior designation process of lawyers had happened only once in the last eight years.
Prior to this, the Supreme Court Advocate on Record Association (SCAORA) had filed an application before the top court seeking a direction to the Committee for Designation of Senior Advocates (CDSA) to conclude the process of appointing senior advocates with regard to applications that were invited in February 2022.