Senior designation: SC removes point-based assessment of lawyers

New Delhi | The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued a new set of guidelines for grant of senior designation to advocates as it did away with the existing point-based assessment by the top court and high courts.

A bench of Justices Abhay S Oka, Ujjal Bhuyan and S V N Bhatti said its experience in the last seven-and-a-half years showed it might not be rationally or objectively possible to assess caliber standing at the bar and the legal experience of advocates applying for senior designations on the basis of points.

The top court asked the high courts to amend their existing rules in line with the new set of directions within four months.

"The decision to confer designation shall be of the full court of the high courts or this court. The applications of all candidates found to be eligible by the permanent secretariat along with relevant documents submitted by the applicants shall be placed before the full house," the verdict said.

It added, "An endeavour can always be made to arrive at consensus. However, if a consensus on designation of advocates is not arrived at, the decision-making must be by a democratic method of voting. Whether in a given case there should be a secret ballot, is a decision which can be best left to the high courts to take a call considering facts and circumstances of the given case."

The apex court, however, said the minimum qualification of 10 years of law practice fixed needed no reconsideration.

The top court further allowed the practice of advocates filing their applications for the grant of designation to continue as it indicated consent on their part.

"Additionally, the full court may consider and confer designation dehors an application in a deserving case. In the scheme of Section 16(2), there is no scope for individual judges of this court or high courts to recommend candidate for designation," the top court said.

The bench said a minimum of one exercise of designation should be undertaken every calendar year.

"The processes already initiated on the basis of decisions of this court in the case of Indira Jaising-1 and Indira Jaising-2 shall continue to be governed by the said decisions," it added.

The court, however, said the new process will not be initiated and new applications won't be considered unless a proper regime of rules was framed by high courts.

"It is obvious that even this court will have to undertake the exercise of amending the rules/guidelines in the light of this decision. Every endeavour shall be made to improve the regime/system of designation by periodically reviewing the same by this court and the respective high courts," the bench said.

Section 16 of the Advocates Act deals with senior designation of lawyers.

The top court had previously observed that a "serious introspection" was required when it came to designating lawyers as senior advocates and said it was doubtful whether by interviewing a candidate for a few minutes, his personality or suitability could really be tested.

An erstwhile bench of three former judges, namely, Justices Ranjan Gogoi, R F Nariman and Navin Sinha, delivered its verdict on senior advocate Indira Jaising's plea on October 12, 2017 and issued a slew of guidelines including setting up of a permanent committee led by the Chief Justice of India to accord senior designations to lawyers.

The 2017 judgement said aside from the CJI, the committee would include the senior-most apex court judge or a high court judge, as the case may be in the committee.

The three-judge bench also proposed setting up of a permanent secretariat to collate all information of a prospective candidate to confer senior designation status by the permanent committee.

However, certain directions such as holding of an interview for grant of senior designation and grant of 25 marks for the interview were hotly debated.

Concerns were also raised on the weightage given to interviews in the selection process, with fears of potential manipulation and lack of equal opportunity.

In 2017, the top court formulated guidelines for itself and high courts governing the exercise of designating lawyers as seniors and said all matters relating to the designation of senior advocates in the apex court and high courts should be dealt with by a "Committee for Designation of Senior Advocates".

'Unnecessary' coffee breaks of HC judges prompts SC to call for performance audit

New Delhi | High court judges taking breaks "unnecessarily" and too often found a mention in the Supreme Court on Tuesday, which called for their performance audits.

A bench of Justices Surya Kant and N Kotiswar Singh said the top court was receiving several complaints against high court judges and it was a high time to assess the expenditure on them vis-a-vis their output.

"There are some judges who work very hard but at the same time there are judges who are unnecessarily taking coffee breaks; this break or that break. What is for lunch hour? We are hearing a lot of complaints about the high court judges. This is a larger issue which needs to be looked into. What is the performance of the high court judges? How much we are spending and what is the output? It's high time we do a performance audit," Justice Kant said.

The judge's remark came on a plea of four persons, who moved the top court claiming that the Jharkhand High Court reserved its order on the criminal appeal against conviction and life sentence in 2022 but the judgement was not pronounced.

Advocate Fauzia Shakil, appearing for them, said after the top court's nudge in the matter, the high court on May 5 and 6 pronounced the verdicts in their cases in which three of the four were acquitted while the remaining resulted in a split verdict and the matter was referred to the high court chief justice and he was granted bail.

This morning, Shakil pointed out that despite the pronouncement of the verdicts by the high court a week ago, the acquitted three persons were not released from jail and in the judgements, the high court did not mention the date of reserving the orders.

Taking exception, the bench asked the Jharkhand government counsel to immediately release them before the lunch break and posted the matter post 2 pm.

When the matter came up for hearing, the state counsel informed the bench that the convicts were released and it was due to the non-availability of release orders from the trial courts that delayed the process.

Shakil said it was due to the apex court that the four of them were "breathing fresh air" and had the high court delivered the verdicts on time, they would have been out of jail three years ago.

Justice Kant referred to it as a judge's duty and said, "We feel sorry for the suffering of these persons that due to the judicial system they had to remain in jail for such a long time."

Hopefully in this case, the court will be "frank and blunt" to deal with the issue of the output of judges as it also relates to personal liberty, he added.

The bench's order observed petitioners Pila Pahan, Soma Badang, Satyanarayan Sahu were convicted of murder and other charges by the trial court and later acquitted by the high courts, and in the case of Dharmeshwar Oraon who was convicted for the offence of rape, there was a split verdict but he was released on bail.

All four persons belong to SC/ST or OBC.

The top court said the issue raised in the case was of "paramount importance" and "goes to the root of the criminal justice system".

It tagged the plea with a similar case related to Allahabad high court where information was sought on the date of pronouncement of the judgement and the date when the judgement was uploaded on the apex court website.

"It seems to us that the issues noticed in above mentioned orders would require a deeper analysis and mandatory guidelines by this court, so that convicts or undertrials aren't compelled to loose the trust and faith in the justice delivery system," the bench said. The timeline prescribed earlier by this court for pronouncement of judgements, it said, will have to be adhered to along with mechanism which this court will propose.

The bench directed the registry to collate data from high courts and posted the matter in July.