The Punjab & Haryana High Court has designated 76 lawyers as Senior Advocates.
The notification issued today reads,
"The aforesaid Senior Advocates are being designated subject to the condition that they would conduct 10 'Free Legal Aid' cases pro bono every year."
Those conferred the designation are:
1. Raj Kumar Sharma
2. Ashit Malik
3. Ranjan Kumar Handa
4. Ravi Sodhi
5. Anil Malhotra
6. Nareshinder Singh Boparai
7. Jagdish Manchanda
8. Amit Sethi
9. Ajneesh Raj Takkar
10. Sudeep Mahajan
11. Jasdeep Singh Toor
12. Sartej Singh Narula
13. Manish Jain
14. Sukhjinder Singh Behl
15. Sukant Gupta
16. Inder Pal Singh Doabia
17. Vikas Singh
18. Adarsh Kumar Jain
19. Gurpreet Singh
20. Kamal Sehgal
21. Yogesh Putney
22. Ashu Mohan Punchhi
23. Sanjiv Gupta
24. Jasdeep Singh Gill
25. Deepender Singh
26. Mansur Ali
27. Sunil Kumar Singh Panwar
28. Raj Kumar (R.K. Arora)
29. Lokesh Sinhal
30. Mandeep Singh Sachdev
31. Arvind Moudgil
32. Satwant Singh Rangi
33. Ashwani Kumar Talwar
34. Vikas Chatrath
35. Pardeep Singh (Poonia)
36. Hemant Bassi
37. Pawan Girdhar
38. Gautam Dutt
39. Amardeep Singh (ADS Sukhija)
40. Premjit Singh (Hundal)
41. Anurag Goyal
42. Sant Pal Singh Sidhu
43. Promila Nain
44. Vipin Mahajan
45. Gurbinder Singh Dhillon @ G.B.S. Dhillon
46. Monica Chhibber
47. Sarju Puri
48. Karambir Singh Nalwa
49. Aman Bahri
50. Puja Sharma (Puja Chopra)
51. Salil Dev Singh Bali
52. Sunish Bindlish
53. Pankaj
54. Parminder Singh Shekhon
55. Navdeep Singh
56. Rajeev Anand
57. Sandeep Goyal
58. Ankur Mittal
59. Ravinder Singh Randhawa
60. Gaurav Mohunta
61. Jasdev Singh Mehndiratta
62. Pradeep Virk
63. Kunal Dawar
64. Rahul Sharma
65. Dheeraj Jain
66. Divya Sharma
67. Ravinder Malik @ Ravinder Malik (Ravi)
68. Sarjit Bhadu
69. Sunil Kumar Nehra
70. Chanchal Kumar Singla
71. Maninder Singh
72. Aman Pal
73. Kshitij Sharma
74. Puneet Kaur Sekhon
75. Preet Inder Singh (Ahluwalia)
76. Akshay Kumar Jindal
The list also includes at least five woman advocates:
Puneet Kaur Sekhon
Divya Sharma
Monica Chhibber
Puja Sharma (Puja Chopra)
Promila Nain
Advocate Anil Malhotra has assisted different High Courts as amicus in various matters on family law and child custody disputes, including international parental child abduction cases.
Advocate Navdeep Singh (Major) is a leading name in military law. He is an author, a lawyer and former officer in the Territorial Army.
Advocate Sartej Singh Narula is President of the Punjab and Haryana High Court Bar Association.
Advocate Vikas Chatrath is a known name in service law. He also runs and hosts a Youtube channel 'Beyond Law CLC' where legal experts including former judges regularly speak on various topics.
Advocate Lokesh Sinhal is a Senior Additional Advocate General with the Haryana government and represents the State before the Supreme Court. Advocates Ankur Mittal and Pawan Girdhar are Additional Advocates General in Chandigarh.
Advocate Dheeraj Jain is a senior panel counsel with the Union of India. He is the son of Additional Solicitor General (ASG) Satya Pal Jain.
Union government senior panel counsel Arvind Moudgil has represented the Enforcement Directorate (ED) as Special Public Prosecutor (SSP).
Advocate Divya Sharma has also been on the senior panel of the Central government since 2023.
Advocate Yogesh Putney has been a Senior Standing Counsel for the Income Tax Department for many years.
210 advocates at the High Court had applied for Senior designation in 2024. The process had got delayed for various reasons, including pendency of a case on the Senior designation process before the Supreme Court.
After interacting with the eligible candidates, a committee had last month cleared 64 advocates for the designation. All of them were approved by the Full Court. In addition, the Full Court is reported to have voted on and cleared 12 more applicants, taking the total to 76.
The High Court now has over 300 Senior Advocates. The last designations were conferred in 2021.