NEW DELHI: Supreme Court lawyers associations have filed a plea in the top court seeking a direction to the apex court to formulate uniform guidelines to allow all the advocates present and appearing in a particular case to mark their appearance.
SC Lawyers Seek Consistency in Appearance Guidelines for Advocates
The petitioners SCBA and SCAORA stated role of the advocate is not limited to making submissions, more so when she is appearing before the highest constitutional court of the land, but may extend to research of relevant case laws, secure appropriate instructions from the client, preparing the brief for the senior advocate, making written submissions for the court, drafting the pleadings, filing of the case before the court and much more which goes before a case could be heard and adjudicated by this court.
Supreme Court to Review Petition on Marking Advocate Appearances
"A narrower interpretation of “appearance” to mean only to make submission before the court will be a discredit to the various functions performed by an advocate," their joint plea said.
They also said not recording of the appearances of the junior advocates will not only deprive them of the benefit of the voting rights in association elections and chamber allocation but also affect their chances of being designated as a Senior Advocate by this court.
"The change of administrative practices by way of judicial orders should be discouraged as same only creates inconsistencies. General practice and procedure of this court should not vary from one bench to another for smooth function of this court and realising its objective of administration of justice," their plea said.
The petition was drawn by President of SCAORA Vipin Nair, SCBA secretary Vikrant Yadav and others including Amit Sharma and Nikhil Jain.
SCBA president Kapil Sibal, and senior advocates Atmaram Nadkarni, Rachana Srivastava and Gagam Gupta have settled the petition.
The SC Bar Association and SC Advocate on Record Association were aggrieved with a direction issued by a bench led by Justice Bela M Trivedi on September 20, 2024 in a case of ‘Bhagwan Singh Vs State of UP & Ors'.
The court had then directed Advocates on Record may mark the appearances of only those lawyers who are authorised to appear and argue the case on a particular date of hearing. It had then also ordered the CBI inquiry into a case after a man denied filing a petition in connection with a rape and kidnapping case quashed by the Allahabad High Court against a key witness in the infamous 2002 Nitish Katara murder case.
In their plea, the lawyers bodies said, "This practice direction is contrary to the settled practice of this court and is in overreach of the directions issued on the administrative side of this court from time to time." They also cited the provisions of the SC Rules, 2013 in this regard.
