Supreme Court calls for record from Punjab and Haryana HC on senior advocates’ designation

The Supreme Court has sought all relevant record from Punjab and Haryana high court on a plea challenging designation of 19 lawyers as senior advocates

The Supreme Court has sought all relevant record from Punjab and Haryana high court on a plea challenging designation of 19 lawyers as senior advocates.

A bench headed by Justice UU Lalit has sought response on the plea from a lawyer, Amar Vivek Aggarwal, who had alleged non-adherence to the rules in the process. (Getty Images/iStockphoto)

A bench headed by Justice UU Lalit has sought response on the plea from a lawyer, Amar Vivek Aggarwal, who had alleged non-adherence to the rules in the process. It was in May 2021 that the high court had designated 19 lawyers as senior advocates.

The plea claimed that designation took place in violation of the directions of 2017 judgment in Indira Jaising’s case by the Supreme Court. Acting contrary to the rules, firstly, the permanent committee also including three senior most judges arbitrarily assumed the power not vested in it and indiscriminately awarded marks to the candidates under specific objective field of “domain knowledge” containing 40 marks, whereas as per rules, the “secretariat” was to compile the relevant data and information on the basis of material, and information supplied by candidates. It claimed that voluminous data and information furnished by the candidates was not even summoned by the committee for its perusal and consideration as the committee barely met only for few hours and hastily conducted interviews of 112 candidates during pandemic.