Blitz Bureau
THE Supreme Court has set aside a 2019 ruling of the Orissa High Court which had quashed a rule that empowered the full court to suo motu designate lawyers as Senior Advocates, according to Bar and Bench. The Apex court also upheld the designation conferred on five lawyers in 2019 using this suo motu method.
A Bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and R Mahadevan opined that the top court had already clarified the issue in Jitender @ Kalla v. State of NCT of Delhi, passed in May this year.
It, therefore, upheld Rule 6(9) of the High Court of Orissa (Designation of Senior Advocate) Rules, 2019, which empowered the full court to suo motu confer the senior gown on lawyers, sans any written application by interested lawyers or any referral by a judge.
The suo motu method had been invoked in 2019 by the full court of the Orissa High Court to confer the senior gown on five lawyers. This decision was challenged before the Orissa HC on the judicial side by four other lawyers who had applied for the senior gown. In 2019, the High Court quashed Rule6 (9), holding that the Supreme Court, in the Indira Jaising case, had revised the system of senior designations to provide for only two methods of conferring the senior gown.
However, it decided not to revoke the senior advocate designation already conferred on the five lawyers, observing, “We have no doubt in our mind that the designated lawyers deserve to be designated as ‘Senior Advocates’ and in the process, they shall be designated as ‘Senior Advocates.’…we do not want to disgrace them at present by withdrawing the designation, as there is no fault on their part in the entire exercise.”
