Supreme Court releases new guidelines for senior advocate designations

Hindustan Times

14-05-2025

In a major overhaul of the process to designate senior advocates, the Supreme Court on Tuesday directed that the points-based assessment system introduced through the landmark Indira Jaising judgments in 2017 and 2023 be discontinued by both the top court and high courts.
A special bench comprising justices Abhay S Oka, Ujjal Bhuyan, and SVN Bhatti held that the existing framework, which awards marks for categories such as years of practice, reported judgments, publications, and interviews, will no longer apply to future designations, and said that all high courts must instead frame new rules or amend their existing ones to reflect the apex court's judgment.
The court stressed the need for diversity and representation, particularly of advocates practising in trial courts.
It has given high courts four months to frame new rules in accordance with its directions.
According to the order, designation decisions must rest with the full court of the Supreme Court or the respective high court and applications found eligible by the permanent secretariat, along with supporting documents, must be placed before the full court. The court designating seniors should aim for consensus and if that is not possible, a democratic method of voting should be adopted, the Supreme Court said.
The special bench also said secret ballots can be used at a court's discretion.
The minimum eligibility of 10 years of practice for one to be eligible for the senior advocate designation though, will remain unchanged and while advocates can continue to apply for designation, courts can also confer the designation dehors an application in deserving cases, the apex court has said.
While processes already underway under the previous Indira Jaising framework will continue, no new applications should be accepted until new rules are framed, the Supreme Court said.
The court also said 'at least one exercise of designation should be undertaken every calendar year'.
The purpose of such overhaul of the existing system, the special bench said, was solely to 'improve' it and ensure that no deserving candidate was left out, the Supreme Court said.
'We learn from our experience and the mistakes committed in the past. Therefore, the endeavour of all stakeholders should be to keep on improving the system, so that we may ensure that not a single deserving advocate is left out of the process of designation and not a single undeserving person is designated,' the court said.
The apex court's order follows hearings in March this year where several advocates raised concerns about the fairness and transparency of the current system for appointing senior advocates, particularly the weightage given to brief interviews conducted for applicants and the perceived disadvantage faced by trial court lawyers.
Under the Advocates Act, 1961, the Supreme Court and high courts can designate senior advocates based on their ability, legal standing at the Bar and expertise. Before 2017, each high court followed its own criteria, often leading to inconsistencies and lack of uniform standards. In 2017, the Supreme Court, while hearing a PIL filed by senior advocate Indira Jaising, introduced a system standardising the designation process, grading all applicants on a scale of 100.
It made way for a Permanent Committee comprising the Chief Justice and two senior most judges of the Supreme Court or the high court, along with the attorney general or the advocate general of the state, as the case may be, to award such points.
In 2023, the Supreme Court fine-tuned the framework by modifying the weightage assigned to judgments and publications.
However, on February 20, 2025, when a division bench comprising justices Oka and AG Masih was hearing a case of parole for a convict in case of a double murder, it realised that a senior advocate had deliberately misrepresented facts in the case. The bench then raised concerns over the process of designating lawyers as senior advocates and referred the issue to chief justice Sanjiv Khanna, urging the CJI to constitute a larger bench to hear the case.
The court noted that since both the Indira Jaising decisions in 2017 and 2023 were delivered by three-judge benches, only a larger bench could reconsider them. Following this, a special bench comprising justices Oka, Bhuyyan and Bhatti was constituted to hear the case.
In its judgment on Tuesday, the court said the point based format had failed to achieve the 'desired objective,' particularly on two aspects — including lawyers from the district judiciary and on rewarding one's 'character, honesty and integrity'.
'The points-based assessment, as can be seen from the earlier discussion, can hardly be objective, and it tends to be highly subjective,' the court said. 'When we talk of diversity, we must ensure that the high courts evolve a mechanism by which the members of the Bar practising in our trial and district judiciary and before specialised tribunals are considered for designation as their role is no inferior to the role played by advocates practising before this court and high courts. This is also an essential part of diversity. The high courts can always call for the views of the principal district judges or the heads of the tribunals on such applicants,' it said.