Impression at the Bar that “relatives of Seniors or those who come from particular chambers” get Senior gown, Indira Jaising writes to CJI

The corridor gossip surrounding some of the senior designations made by the Supreme Court last week seems to have served as a catalyst for questioning the procedure of designation itself..Barely a week after five lawyers were given the senior gown, Senior Advocate and former ASG Indira Jaising has written a letter to the Chief Justice of India (CJI) and his brother judges today alleging lack of transparency..She has claimed that out of the fourteen candidates whose names were considered for designation, only five were designated and no reasons were ascribed for the rejection of the rest..She has also urged the CJI to consider framing Rules under Article 145(a) of the Constitution specifying the criteria and the procedure for being designated a Senior Advocate of the Court..The letter delves right into the issue and states that:.“I write to you on a matter of great concern to the Bar in IndiaYou have on 23.04.2015 designated five persons as Senior Advocates of this Court.”.Jaising then states that the purpose of designation is to further the administration of justice.“by improving the quality of argumentation at the Bar…and that the act of designation is not meant to be a largess given by the Judges for individual advancement of a particular lawyer.”.Subsequently, in an apparent dig at the current trend followed by the Court while designating Seniors, she goes on to write that,.“The designation is not the privilege of those who handle regular criminal or civil SLPs on Mondays and Fridays running from court to court. There seems to be an unwritten bias against lawyers who do PIL in Environmental law or Human Rights law cases and those who have domain expertise in the specialized subjects such as International Arbitration, Inter State Water Disputes, Cyber law, etc. Unlike general practitioners who appear regularly, these lawyers appear in the subjects of their expert calling, but that does not mean that they are not fit for designation, quite the contrary, their special knowledge enhances the quality of justice dispensed by the court.”.Jaising claims that the departure from the previous norm of five sitting judges deciding on designation to the current convention of the Full court voting by secret ballot has encouraged unhealthy and non-transparent lobbying..“This is evident from the current designation. Out of 14 candidates who had recommendations from not less than five Judges, only five have been selected for designation with nothing to indicate why the others were not designated. Each of the five Advocates is a general practitioner. Advocates with PIL background and domain expertise have been totally left out.”.She then alleges that,.“The impression has long being growing at the Bar that only relatives of seniors or those who come from particular chambers get designated. What is worse, there seems to be an imbalance between caste and communities and I can only hope that this is not conscious as that would go against the ethos of the Constitution..”.Jaising has urged CJI Dattu to constitute a Search committee comprising judges to,. “identify those lawyers doing PIL work in Environmental law or Human Rights and those lawyers having domain expertise for conferring designation as Senior Advocates.”.A copy of the letter has also been sent to Senior Advocates Fali Nariman, Mohan Parasaran, PP Rao, Dushyant Dave, Harish Salve and Murli Bhandare, Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi, Supreme Court Advocates on Record Association and the Bar Council of India..Read the full letter below..Picture courtesy:.Indira Jaising.Justice HL Dattu