[Senior Designations] Supreme Court allows one mark for each year lawyers spend at the Bar beyond 10 years

The Supreme Court on Wednesday modified the marking process for selection and designation of Senior Advocates by the higher judiciary..A Bench of Justices UU Lalit, Ravindra Bhat and PS Narasimha granted the relief in a prayer by Senior Advocate Indira Jaising seeking standardised marking against years of experience. "Instead of 10 marks to be allotted to a counsel who has put in 10-20 years of practice, the marks be allotted commensurate with the standing of the person at the bar. This modification shall be effective from the date of this order. The other prayers will be taken up on [next] Thursday," the Bench said in its order. .The Court was hearing pleas alleging that some High Courts were using "arbitrary and discriminatory" secret voting as a norm while conferring senior designations on lawyers.Jaising had moved the Supreme Court seeking a clarification on whether such voting is violative of its earlier judgment in Indira Jaising v. Supreme Court of India.The application filed in Jaising's 2017 case stated that the High Courts of Delhi and Punjab & Haryana have designated lawyers as Senior Advocates in a manner contrary to the 2017 judgment. Even after marks are assigned to a candidate by the Committee set up under the respective High Court Senior Designation Rules, each and every candidate was put to vote by the Full Court, it was pointed out.Consequently, even those who obtained the requisite cut-off marks decided upon by the High Court could not get designated for want of the requisite number of votes, Jaising argued in her plea."It is humbly submitted that this frustrates the very purpose of having a committee, a marking system and cut off marks and brings back the subjective element in the matter of designation," her application stated..At the outset, the Bench on Wednesday said it would await the Solicitor General's response before stating anything on the matter. However, it said there was no reason to defer one of Jaising's prayers regarding marks for experience at the Bar.The Bench took note of her contention that in the present scheme of assessing aspirants for senior designations, there may be counsel with 17 or 19 years of practice, but both will be allocated 10 marks even as those with more than 20 years of experience would uniformly get 20 marks for the same. .After Solicitor General Tushar Mehta prayed for time as the entire process might require reconsideration, the Bench permitted the Central government to respond by May 9, and the matter will be heard on May 12. Counsel for other parties will be liberty to put in their responses to the SG's submissions within two days thereafter, the order specified. .Jaising in her petition submitted that the process of designation is a selection of those who are worthy of designation and such merit is not be decided on the basis of the Full Court vote, since this is not an election to an office.The 2017 judgment of this Supreme Court made it clear that voting was to be resorted to only if unavoidable, she contended.Jaising argued in the plea that when every candidate was put to vote and that too by secret ballot with no discussion, "it is obvious that the decision to designate is not based on the merit of the candidate but on the personal preferences of the judges who vote in favour of or against a candidate.""If voting is the decisive factor as it seems to be, the marking system as laid down in the above-mentioned objective criteria table becomes of no consequence. This is evident from the following chart which indicated that even those who obtained the cut off marks did not get the requisite number of votes and hence were not designated by the Hon’ble High Court of Delhi," the application stated..Apart from a clarification on this aspect, the application prayed for the Court to decide the uniform minimum number of marks to be obtained by a candidate to be designated as a Senior Advocate. Another prayer made was to direct that advertisements inviting applications are issued periodically twice a year. Justifying the need for a clarification on the issue, the application stated,"The issue is critical to the development of a free and competent bar which will be in a position to assist the Court in a dispassionate and objective manner.".[Follow our coverage of today's hearing]