SC appoints AG as amicus on sr advocates designation issue

New Delhi: The Supreme Court today appointed Attorney General Mukul Rohatgi as amicus curiae in a PIL seeking judicial scrutiny of the Supreme Court's method to designate lawyers as 'senior advocates'.

"The Attorney General will act as a nodal officer and you all give proposal to him. We are open to all good suggestions," a bench comprising justices T S Thakur and V Gopala Gowda said.
Senior advocate and the Supreme Court Bar Association (SCBA) president Dushyant Dave said, "It is a very sad commentary on us. Please pass an injunction on high courts granting 'senior' designations on lawyers who hardly practice before them."

The bench agreed with the concerns expressed by various senior advocates including Kapil Sibal, Rajiv Dhavan, Abhishek Manu Singhvi, M N Krishnamani and others on the issue and asked them to come out with concrete proposals to improve the existing system.

The court gave six weeks time to Rohatgi to collate the proposals of various lawyers and file the report within six weeks and posted the PIL for hearing in the third week of October.

In the PIL, Jaising had termed the present process as opaque, arbitrary and fraught with nepotism.

She had claimed that the advocates taking up matters of human rights, public interest litigations were ignored and there was need to analyse data relating to the cases argued, judgements delivered in their matters and their contribution to jurisprudence and legal aid programmes.