The Supreme Court has dismissed plea seeking the abolition of the Senior Advocate designation system which was filed by six advocates including advocate Mathews Nedumpara and two others.
A bench comprising of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Justice Sudhanshu Dhulia and Justice CT Ravikumar have called the plea as another in the the line of misadventures by advocate Nedumpara and dismissed it.
The bench said that system of designation cannot be said to untenable and against Article 14.
The bench further said that they have no hesitation to say that the plea is a misadventure at the behest of the petitioner.
The Court said that this was done as earlier orders have no bearing.We dismiss it with no orders as to costs.
The Court had reserved its verdict in the matter on October 4 this year, after a day-long hearing.
The advocates who were part of filing the plea were Mathews Nedumpara, Rohini Mohit Amin, Maria Nedumpara, Rajesh Vishnu Adrekar, Hemali Suresh Kurne, and Sharad Vusudeo Koli, along with two others, an entrepreneur named Karan Kaushik, and a Chartered Accountant, Manisha Nimesh Mehta (petitioners).
The petitioners challenged the Senior designation system on the ground that it created a special class of advocates with special rights, privileges, and status that were not available to ordinary advocates. This was unconstitutional and violated the right to equality under Article 14 of the Constitution of India, they contended.
They further asserted that it violated the right to practice one’s profession under Article 19 and the right to life under Article 21 of the Constitution.
As a result of the senior advocate designation system, the legal industry was being monopolised by a “small cabal” of designated advocates, leaving the vast majority of meritorious lawyers as “ordinary plebeians” who were meted out discriminatory treatment, the petitioners said.
Only the relatives of judges, politicians, and existing senior counsel benefitted from this system, they submitted. They argued that this system has destroyed the justice delivery system beyond redemption. The ambition to get such a designation makes younger members of the bar a slave to the bench, the petitioners further stressed.
Moreover, lawyers resort to sycophancy and cavass for votes, while those practicing in the lower judiciary are out of contention for the gown, they added.
Therefore, such a cabal must be put to an end and the senior designation system abolished, the petitioners asserted.
The Supreme Court had in March 2019 barred Nedumpara from practicing before it for a year after finding him guilty of browbeating judges.
At the time, the top court also dismissed a plea by the National Lawyers Campaign for Judicial Transparency and Reforms, which Nedumpara heads, challenging the current system of the designation of lawyers as Senior Advocates.
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