Justice GS Patel of the Bombay High Court recently had some words to share on the institution of Senior Advocates, and the relationship between the Bar and the Bench..In proceedings relating to an administration suit, the lawyer for the plaintiff sought a fixed date for further hearing. More specifically, the plea was made by a junior counsel on behalf of the senior counsel Jayaprakash Sen who was appearing in the matter..It was a plea that Patel J did not take too kindly to..The order passed on August 30 reads,.“On behalf of the plaintiff, a submission is made that a certain senior Advocate appears and, therefore, I should give a fixed date for this matter. I refuse to do anything of the kind. This practice of seeking fixed dates at the convenience of senior advocates will now stop. If they have accepted a brief in a matter listed on the ad-interim board, they will remain present or they will return that brief. .We will not fix our dockets on the basis of their diaries. They will adjust their diaries to our dockets. Being designated a senior counsel has more responsibilities than privileges. Regaining those privileges will present no difficulty at all.”.The next day, on August 31 the senior counsel did appear in the matter; the defendants were represented by Senior Advocate DD Madon. .The practise of seeking dates on the convenience of advocates is not new, specially in case of senior counsels, and judges often accommodate these requests. Speaking on certain adjournments acting against the interest of the younger members of the bar, Ravi Kadam, a senior counsel in the Bombay High Court, in an earlier interview had said.“If I am not there the matter gets adjourned; this is a bad thing because in a sense if juniors were forced to go on, it would be good because that’s one way that they would get blooded and get into the flow of work.”.Of course, this is not the first time that differences of opinion between the Bench and the Bar have been expressed in judicial orders. In October last year, the Delhi High Court’s Pradeep Nandrojog and Mukta Gupta JJ came down on a senior counsel, observing that,.“In our opinion a senior counsel ought not to appear in a matter in which he has been briefed but the learned senior counsel has no time to study the brief.”.Read the order below.
