Times of India: New Delhi: Wednesday, 08 July 2015.
Indira Jaising, the first woman lawyer to be
designated as 'senior advocate', on Tuesday sought judicial scrutiny of the Supreme
Court's method to designate lawyers as 'senior advocates', terming the present
process as opaque, arbitrary and fraught with nepotism.
Jaising, who was also the first woman additional
solicitor general, filed a PIL in the apex court saying "lack of definite
criteria and lack of transparency in the designations by the Supreme Court has
resulted in arbitrariness, favouritism and nepotism in the designation of
senior advocates".
She said such arbitrary designation of 'senior
advocates', whose fees are more than three times those of non-designated
advocates on an average, had created a "class of undesirable
elitism", making legal services unaffordable to litigants.
"An elite handful of senior advocates is seen
day in and day out at the bar while others equally deserving and willing to
serve the community are excluded," she said.
"The petitioner challenges the arbitrary and
discriminatory manner and method of designating senior advocates in exercise of
powers under Section 16 of the Advocates Act by the Supreme Court (on
administrative side) and the consequential denial of designation of senior
advocates to deserving persons," Jaising said.
"There is no criteria laid down for
determining excellence in advocacy and no rational nexus between the persons
designated and their excellence or no rational reason for rejection of persons
of eminence and ability. This has resulted in denial of designation of those
advocates who have domain expertise in matter such as PIL, human rights, family
law, international law and specialized subjects such as inter-state river water
disputes, commercial international arbitration, cyber law and other such
specialized subjects," she added.
Questioning the apex court's April 23 decision to
designate some advocates as 'seniors', Jaising said, "This excluded
several persons who were deserving of designation and had the recommendations
of at least five judges." She said her application through RTI to be
informed about the criteria was declined.
Jaising said, "A comparison of the CVs of the
designated lawyers with those not designated will show the discriminatory
consequences of the process where no weightage is given to the track record of
the person. This outcome is the result of the recently introduced rule of
designation by secret vote rather than an informed discussion among judges on
the merits of each candidate."
She said designating a lawyer as senior advocate could
not be reduced to that of a beauty pageant where the winner was decided through
secret vote. She said in the last 15 years, only one advocate from the dalit
community was designated as 'senior' and not a single one from the
differently-abled category. Similarly, women and those from minority
communities had been discriminated.
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