Plea challenging May 2021 Senior Designations: Supreme Court asks Punjab and Haryana High Court to produce records

The Supreme Court on Tuesday issued notice to the Punjab and Haryana High Court on a plea to rework Senior Advocate designations made by the High Court in May 2021 by bringing it in compliance with the guidelines issued by the top court in its 2017 judgment of Indira Jaising v. Supreme Court of India..A Bench of Justices UU Lalit, S Ravindra Bhat and PS Narasimha called for records concerning the case from the High Court on a plea by three lawyers who had applied for senior gown but were not designated."Mr. Vikas Singh (Senior Counsel appearing for petitioners) submits that he is confining his case to prayer A and C. At this stage without entering into issues raised in petition. We deem it appropriate to call for record and issue notice only to Punjab and Haryana High Court," the Supreme Court directed.The plea alleged that the Punjab & Haryana High Court had designated 19 lawyers as Senior Advocates on May 28, 2021 in violation of the 2017 apex court judgment and Rules 9 to 11 of the Rules for designation of Senior Advocate framed by the High Court.The plea alleged that 112 candidates had applied for senior gown pursuant to a notification dated March 7, 2019. No action was taken on the same for two years but in may 19, 2021, the permanent committee under the rules sent an email to all candidates to be physically present for interaction with the committee.Subsequently, the permanent committee drew up a list of 41 of the 112 candidates based on weighted criteria with cut-off marks of 55 out of 100. The said list was never made public, the plea claimed.Out of that 41, the permanent committee shortlisted 27 names for designations and placed the same before the full court. The full court then approved 19 names out of the same."Crucially three judges whose relatives were candidates and two of whom stood designated, participated and voted in the full court meeting..... One of the name incidentally happened to be wife of a former judge currently President of State Consumer Commission," the plea said. It was contended that the entire list of 112 candidates was never placed before the full court as required by the rules nor were the marks of all candidates made public. "The results of the 112 candidates ought to have been declared on weighted criteria for which the candidate had legitimate expectation to know their relative merit and marks of all ought to have been made public," the petition stated.The petitioners, therefore, asked the top court to call for the records of the case from the High Court and prayed for reworking the senior designation list strictly as per inter-se merit.The plea also prayed for quashing of the May 28, 2021 designations. However, Senior Counsel Vikas Singh appearing for the petitioners did not press the latter prayer.