Solicitor General Tushar Mehta and Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) President Kapil Sibal recently met Chief Justice of India DY Chandrachud and asked him to review the current process being followed by the Supreme Court for the designation of lawyers as Senior Advocates.
As per a leading legal news platform, SG Mehta confirmed that he met the CJI on August 13, while Sibal declined to comment.
The distinguished lawyers requested the CJI to revisit the Indira Jaising judgment on senior designations, which currently governed the process.
On October 12, 2017, the top court of the country held that a five-member permanent committee headed by the CJI should be set up for short-listing candidates. Similar guidelines were issued for 24 High Courts across the country.
Before the 2017 verdict, the process for designation of lawyers as Senior Advocates involved secret voting among the judges by the rule of majority.
The CJI was also requested to revisit the May 2023 judgment by Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, which held that the method of secret voting by the full court should be an exception and not the rule.
SG Mehta further took exception to certain criteria currently being followed like publication of articles.
He said some of the lawyers, who were brilliant in arguing, may not write many articles. Besides, there was ghost writing. He said this problem was created by the judiciary and has to be solved by the judiciary only.
The law officer gave a roadmap on how the process could be fine-tuned. He said the lawyers short-listed for senior designation can be watched by judges for around a year, and then there can be a secret ballot where all the judges vote.
He further said that it was too much to expect 50 percent confidence of all the judges for designation as Senior Advocate.
SG Mehta explained that the meeting with the CJI was not for a particular person to be conferred the gown, but to request that the process was revisited in its entirety.
Sibal declined to comment. Calling it a ‘confidential’ meeting, the Senior Advocate said he would not like to speak about it at all.
On August 14, the Apex Court, in a full court meeting, designated 39 lawyers as Senior Advocates.
Total 138 lawyers, including 68 Advocates-on-Record (AoRs), had applied for the senior gown. Out of these, 71 were shortlisted for interviews. Following the interview process, 39 lawyers were conferred the senior gown.
The final list attracted a fair share of controversy, with certain lawyers objecting to the fact that deserving candidates had been left out even without being shortlisted for the interview.