Calcutta HC Senior Designation Guidelines challenged yet again [Read Petition]

The Calcutta High Court has been moved again in another challenge to its 2018 guidelines for designation of Senior Advocates..Advocate Sumeet Chaudhury has filed a petition to this effect, with special emphasis on Clause 20 of the guidelines. Clause 20 lays down a 60 mark qualifying criterion to be designated a Senior Advocate. Chaudhury has contended that such fixation of minimum marks for qualifying as a Senior Advocate amounts to an amendment of the criteria proposed in the 2017 Indira Jaising judgment on Senior Designations..“… the said Guidelines fixating 60 marks as the qualifying marks to be designated as a Senior Advocate would amount to amendment of the criteria as laid down by the Hon’ble Supreme Court in Indira Jaising v. Supreme Court of India & Ors. [(2017) 9 SCC 766] and inconsistent with the Supreme Court Guidelines to Regulate Conferment of Designation of Senior Advocates, 2018 (“the Supreme Court Guidelines”).“.The guideline originally also allowed for the Permanent Committee tasked with making the decisions of senior designations some amount of discretion to relax the 60 mark benchmark by up to 10 marks in “deserving cases”..However, after advocate Debasish Roy posed a challenge to the Calcutta High Court Senior Advocate guidelines last year, a Division Bench of the Court concluded that such discretionary relaxation ought to be scrapped. In its judgment passed in January this year, the Court had held,.“The only standard prescribed in the Act is that in the opinion of the Supreme Court or the high court the advocate has to have ability, standing at the Bar or special knowledge, experience etc. The type or level of such ability or standing has not been set. The provision for making exception by relaxation of benchmark in some deserving cases is ultravires the Act.”.The Court had, therefore, proceeded to order that the second paragraph of Clause 20 concerning the relaxation of the benchmark be deleted..However, since the first challenge by advocate Roy did not deal with whether there should be a 60 mark qualifying criterion at all, the Calcutta High Court did not pass orders on this aspect. However, it opined in the passing that there should not be any qualifying minimum marks in order to be eligible for senior designation. As noted in its January 2019 order,.“In our opinion the stipulation of 60 marks appears to be invalid. But the point regarding 60 marks’ benchmark was neither raised in the pleadings nor argued. Hence, our observation regarding the same is “obiter dicta”. We do not make any order pertaining to it.“.On similar reasoning, advocate Choudhury now seeks the scrapping of the 60 mark criterion under Clause 20. In view of his contentions, Chaudhury has prayed that the Notification by which the guidelines were introduced be recalled. The petition also calls for the recall of the Notification issued inviting applications from advocates based on the challenged guidelines..Read the Petition:.Bar & Bench is available on WhatsApp. For real-time updates on stories, Click here to subscribe to our WhatsApp.