Former ASG questions procedure to designate Sr Advocates in SC

Former Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Indira Jaising has written a letter to Chief Justice of India H L Dattu and other Supreme Court judges questioning the procedure of designating lawyers as senior advocates which allegedly lacked transparency.
The senior advocate said an impression among the lawyers has been growing that there is a bias in conferring the designation and a select category of advocates are preferred.
She also suggested that that CJI should consider setting up a search committee of judges to identify lawyers doing PIL work in environmental or human rights laws and those having specific domain expertise, for conferring of the designation of Senior Advocates.

"The impression has long been growing at the Bar that only relatives of seniors or those who come from particular chambers get designated.
"What is worse, there seems to be an imbalance between caste and communities and I can only hope that this is not conscious as that would go against the ethos of the Constitution by which we are all governed," she said in her letter of April 29.
Jaising, who is the first woman law officer of the country, said the purpose of designation of lawyer as senior advocate was to further the administration of justice by improving the quality of argumentation at the bar, in terms of inputs from seniors with experience or expertise in special branches of law.

"All this is in public interest and the act of designation is not meant to be a largess given by the Judges for individual advancement of a particular lawyer," she said.
Jaising, herself a senior advocate, said the designation was not the privilege of those who handle regular criminal or civil appeals on Mondays and Fridays running from court to court.