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The Calcutta High Court has been moved again in another challenge to its 2018 guidelines for designation of Senior Advocates.
Advocate Sumeet Chaudhury has filed a petition to this effect, with special emphasis on Clause 20 of the guidelines. Clause 20 lays down a 60 mark qualifying criterion to be designated a Senior Advocate. Chaudhury has contended that such fixation of minimum marks for qualifying as a Senior Advocate amounts to an amendment of the criteria proposed in the 2017 Indira Jaising judgment on Senior Designations.
The guideline originally also allowed for the Permanent Committee tasked with making the decisions of senior designations some amount of discretion to relax the 60 mark benchmark by up to 10 marks in “deserving cases”.
However, after advocate Debasish Roy posed a challenge to the Calcutta High Court Senior Advocate guidelines last year, a Division Bench of the Court concluded that such discretionary relaxation ought to be scrapped.
The Court had, therefore, proceeded to order that the second paragraph of Clause 20 concerning the relaxation of the benchmark be deleted.
However, since the first challenge by advocate Roy did not deal with whether there should be a 60 mark qualifying criterion at all, the Calcutta High Court did not pass orders on this aspect. However, it opined in the passing that there should not be any qualifying minimum marks in order to be eligible for senior designation.
On similar reasoning, advocate Chaudhury now seeks the scrapping of the 60 mark criterion under Clause 20. In view of his contentions, Chaudhury has prayed that the Notification by which the guidelines were introduced be recalled. The petition also calls for the recall of the Notification issued inviting applications from advocates based on the challenged guidelines.
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