SC designates seven ex-HC judges, 18 lawyers as senior advocates

The Supreme Court on Saturday designated seven former judges of various High Courts and 18 lawyers as senior advocates.

Among those designated senior advocate roles among the former judges category are Dr J N Bhat, Surendra Kumar, S K Gangele, Vinod Prasad, L Narasimha Reddy, A I S Cheema and Naushad Ali.

Notably, Justice Gangele, who retired in July 2018, faced sexual harassment charges by a district court judge during his tenure at the Madhya Pradesh High Court.

Among the lawyers category, those designated senior advocates by the apex court are Ravi Prakash Mehrotra, S N Bhat, Dr Krishan Singh Chauhan, Vishwajit Singh, D N Goburdhun, Vijay Punjwani, Pradeep Kumar Dey, A D N Rao, Rachna Srivastava, Anil Kumar Sangal, Rajiv Nanda, Arunabha Chowdhury, Ravindra Kumar, Vijay Kumar, Manoj Goel, Yadavilli Prabhakar Rao, G Umapathy and P Niroop.

The decision to grant senior advocate designation under Section 16 of the Advocates Act, 1961 was taken in the full court meeting held on December 8. It had been pending for quite some time due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Fresh guidelines were framed in 2018 for conferring the designation after the top court's judgement in Indira Jaising's case on October 12, 2017.

Prior to the 2017 judgement, the decision on senior advocates designation was taken on the basis of secret voting among the judges and by the rule of majority. Different high courts followed their own criteria.

The fresh norms mandated setting up a permanent committee with a secretariat headed by Chief Justice of India, or chief justice in case of high courts, two senior-most judges with Attorney General/Advocate General, who would nominate another bar member, to scrutinise the candidates, conduct interview and award points before referring the matter to the full court.

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