The prestigious gown was bestowed upon a diverse group of legal practitioners on Friday when the Supreme Court named 56 distinguished lawyers as "senior advocates." This was achieved through a rigorous selection process that prioritized the inclusion of an unprecedented number of women, first-generation lawyers, and subject matter experts.
The list of 56 attorneys, including 11 women and 34 first-generation attorneys, was made public by the top court administration on Friday afternoon. The attorneys were selected for this designation by the CDSA, which is led by Chief Justice of India (CJI) Dhananjaya Y Chandrachud. The other members of the CDSA included attorney general R Venkataramani, senior advocate Kiran Suri (a nominated member of the Bar), and two of the most senior judges, Sanjiv Khanna and Bhushan R Gavai.
The committee used a strict selection process, according to people with knowledge of the situation, and took into account a number of criteria, such as the candidates' overall number of years of bar membership, reported judgments, academic articles, books and column publications, guest lectures, and pro-bono work. The CDSA sought input from impartial academicians in order to grade the lawyers for their academic work. Despite the fact that the committee received over 280 applications for the designation, only 199 of them were invited to meet with the CDSA members on January 16. The committee met with the applicants for more than six hours during the day.
Advocate Shobha Gupta, who represented Bilkis Bano in all of her cases before the Supreme Court, Karuna Nundy, who has represented clients in same-sex marriage and marital rape cases, and Swarupama Chaturvedi, who has represented multiple state governments and the national child rights organization, were among the female attorneys on the list.
On the list of first-generation attorneys were Joseph Aristotle, Shirin Khajuria, Sunil Fernandes, Amit Anand Tiwari, Sanjay M. Nuli, Shoeb Alam, and Abhinav Mukerji. Senior advocates were appointed to a total of 34 first-generation attorneys. This time, a number of attorneys with domain knowledge have also been designated by the CDSA. The title has been given to, among others, advocate Pratap Venugopal, who specializes in tax legislation; Sitesh Mukherjee, who has mastered telecom disputes; and G Saikumar, who specializes in power concerns.
