Madras High Court notifies designation of 62 lawyers as Senior Advocates – The Hindu

The Madras High Court on Thursday notified the designation of 62 lawyers as Senior Advocates. The list includes State Public Prosecutor Hasan Mohammed Jinnah, Additional Advocates- General J. Ravindran and P. Kumaresan and advocate Krishna Srinivasan.

A decision on the designation was taken by the Full Court (a body comprising all judges of the High Court) through voting on Tuesday. The results were notified by the Registrar-General on Thursday and communicated to the selected candidates.

Of the 62 lawyers, only two — A.L. Ganthimathi and Dakshayani Reddy — were women. Though a case was filed for a minimum of 30% reservation for women, the court rejected it on the ground that Senior Advocate was not a post but a privilege and honour conferred on merit.

The designation provides for special privileges like the right of first audience during the hearing of cases in the court halls. The Senior Advocates get distinguished from others by wearing a different pattern of black robes.

It also imposes some restrictions which prevent Senior Advocates from accepting briefs directly from the litigants. They should only get engaged by other lawyers, on record, to argue the cases and should not seek adjournments.

The Madras High Court framed rules for designation of the Senior Advocates, and this is the first designation since the rules were framed in 2020. A committee, headed by Acting Chief Justice T. Raja, had shortlisted the candidates.

The shortlisted names, pursuant to an interview, were placed before the Full Court, which cleared 62 candidates, including N. Chandrasekharan, A.V. Somasundaram, N. Jothi, S. Natarajan and T.S.R. Venkataramana.

The others were S. Vijayakumar, K. Ravi, V.S. Jayakumar, K.R. Tamizh Mani, C.T. Mohan, K.M. Ramesh, K. Balasundaram, P.L. Narayanan, Krishna Srinivasan, K. Srinivasan, Jayesh B. Dolia, M.V. Venkataseshan and N. Ananthapadmanabhan.

The list also included R. Rajarathinam, V. Raghavachari, V.P. Sengottuvel, T. Pramod Kumar Chopda, M. Aravind Subramanyam, G. Karthikeyan, P.V.S. Giridhar, K. Ravi Anantha Padmanabhan, R. Srinivas, K.S. Viswanathan and C. Arul Vadivel alias Sekar.

S. Ravi, T. Lajapathi Roy, Ravi Shanmugam, N. Muralikumaran, P.M. Subramaniam, M. Subash Babu, R. Baskaran, T. Mohan, K.K. Senthilvelan, G. Sankaran and J. Sivanandaraaj, too, made it to the list.

S.R. Rajagopal, N.A. Nissar Ahmed, A. Abdul Hameed, A.K. Sriram, R. Parthasarathy, Abdul Saleem, Srinath Sridevan, P. Valliappan, K.P.S. Palanivel Rajan, S. Mukunth, P.V. Balasubramaniam, B. Saravanan and T. Gowthaman were the other succesful candidates.

R. Gandhi, R. John Sathyan, Abudu Kumar Rajarathnam and M. Sricharan Rangarajan, too, found a place in the list.