Punjab & Haryana High Court confers Senior designation on 76 advocates

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:

1. Puneet Kaur Sekhon

2. Divya Sharma

3. Monica Chhibber

4. Puja Sharma (Puja Chopra)

5. 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.