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Indira Jaising vs. Supreme Court of India Through Secretary General

Not available · 2023 INSC 524Decided 12 May 2023
Not available
Sanjay Kishan Kaul · Ahsanuddin Amanullah · Aravind Kumar

Background

In 2017, in an earlier round of the same writ petition filed by Senior Advocate Indira Jaising, the Supreme Court had replaced the old, opaque secret-ballot system for designating "Senior Advocates" with a Permanent Committee using a point-based scorecard (covering years of practice, judgments/pro bono work/domain expertise, publications, and a personal interview). Several applications and interlocutory applications were later filed, including by the Supreme Court Bar Association and the Union of India, seeking to fine-tune or even reopen aspects of that 2017 framework, based on practical experience of running it for a few years.

Decision Breakdown

The Court clarified its role was only to "fine-tune," not to review or reconsider, the 2017 framework. It held that voting by secret ballot at the Full Court stage should be the exception, not the rule, and reasons must be recorded whenever it is used, since it was undermining the objective scorecard process. It declined to fix cut-off marks in advance (numbers of successful candidates depend on circumstances each cycle), reduced points for "publications" from 15 to 5 while broadening the category to include teaching/guest lectures and quality of legal writing, and increased points for the "judgments/domain expertise" category by 10 (to reward actual substantive contribution, including quality of court synopses filed, rather than mere headcount of appearances, particularly benefiting specialised-tribunal lawyers and government counsel). It retained the 25-point personal interview and directed that designations be conducted at least once a year, with due regard to diversity (gender, first-generation lawyers) in the process, while reaffirming the Court's continuing power to designate Senior Advocates suo motu for truly exceptional candidates.

Lesson Learnt

Even a court-designed institutional reform (like the point-based system for Senior Advocate designations) is treated as a living process (subject to periodic, evidence-based recalibration by the same court, rather than a one-time fix) and honours/privileges conferred by courts on professionals should rest on objective, transparent, recorded criteria rather than unrecorded discretionary voting.

Official source (sci.gov.in)View Judgment (PDF)

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