The Supreme Court has instructed the Secretary General, who is the administrative head of the Court, to file his reply within a period of four weeks in a case relating to the inquiry mechanism into sexual harassment cases against judges.

The bench comprising of Justice Sanjay Kishan Kaul, Justice A.S. Oka and Justice Vikram Nath have directed the Secretary General to put forward his views within a span of 4 weeks, after senior counsel Indira Jaising highlighted that the Secretary General is yet to file his affidavit in the case.

The Court directed, “Learned senior counsel further submits that she would like to file some additional material in view of lapse of time as to how processes have evolved and would like to have the stand of the Secretary General on record for the practices. Let the petitioner file the same on record within four weeks.”

The Supreme Court was hearing a plea filed by a law intern accusing a former Supreme Court judge of sexual harassment. The judge had obtained a gag order against the media from the Delhi High Court.

While the hearing was in progress, on Tuesday, the accused judge was removed by the Bench from the array of parties, after Jaising submitted that the relief now claimed was limited to the mechanism to deal with sexual harassment cases against judges.

The Court directed that the learned counsel for the petitioner submits that respondent Nos.2 and 3 may be deleted from the array of parties as no relief is claimed against them and has given the order accordingly.

The next hearing of the case has been listed on November 15 this year.

New Delhi (ILNS): The Supreme Court Advocates-On-Record Association (SCAORA) has written to the Secretary General of the court, urging it to withdraw the circular against sharing of video conferencing links with other advocates.

The letter states: “We wish to bring to your kind notice that the hearings through video conferencing (virtual court) proceedings are being conducted in place of physical courts of congregation. However, all facilities for oral mentioning in the courts, opportunity to all the AOR/Advocates to view the court proceedings/junior Advocates to view the court proceedings in court to enrich their knowledge and experience etc., have still not been made available even after a span of eight months of the functioning of hearing through video conferencing (virtual court).” 

It states that control of the video and audio is always in the hands of controller of the particular court hall. Despite that, there are catena of incidents wherein the audio and video of the concerned AOR/Advocates have not been unmuted during the proceedings. 

The association requests the secretery general to withdraw the notification of  November 6, and also requests to issue an SOP for enabling lawyers to make oral mentioning of matters in the hearing through video conferencing. It also requests for an additional link to enable AOR/Advocates to view the hearing of all courts. 

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New Delhi: The Supreme Court bench of Justices Rohinton Fali Nariman, Navin Sinha and Indira Banerjee today issued notice to the Registrar General on a plea by Senior Advocate Indira Jaising seeking directions for proper and effective implementation of the Supreme Court’s guidelines on the regulation in conferment of Senior Advocate designation and to initiate the relevant process.

Jaising’s plea has also asked that the senior designation process be conducted in virtual mode in a manner similar to the virtual court hearings. The application has been filed in the case titled Indira Jaising v. Supreme Court of India (through the Secretary General) & Ors. , which had sought guidelines for the designation of Senior Advocates.

Pursuant to the judgment in 2017, the Supreme Court had issued its guidelines on August 6, 2018 for regulating conferment of designation of senior advocates.

The application has stated that as per the guidelines, the Secretariat of the Committee for Designation of Senior Advocates is required to invite applications from candidates seeking conferment of Senior designation twice in a year, but the applications were invited only once in August 2018 after issuance of guidelines.

According to the applicant, going by the guidelines, the registry should have initiated the process of designation in January and July 2019, and in January and July in 2020, but it wasn’t done in these last four windows. The process of inviting applications has therefore come to standstill after August 2018.

According to the applicant, the apex court judgment in 2017 regarding Senior designation was a landmark judgment that rectified long standing imbalances and anomalies in the process, and introduced a great amount of transparency and merit in the process. However, by not implementing the guidelines, the Court has failed to comply with its own judgment, which has adversely impacted several deserving and eligible members of the bar.

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The applicant has also acknowledged the current pandemic and lockdown situation and stated that the Senior advocate designation process can commence even now as the initial stages of calling for applications can be done electronically. Even if the present lockdown gets extended the entire process including scrutiny of applications, interviews, etc can also be done virtually.

– India Legal Bureau

The Supreme Court today dismissed the petition filed by Advocate Reepak Kansal seeking direction to the Registry not to discriminate, humiliate the litigants and to give equal treatment to all litigants by avoiding Pick and Choose Policy as adopted by the Registry and its Section Officers.

The bench presided by Justice Arun Mishra while dictating the order on the phone call further imposed a cost of Rs 100 on Kansal.

The bench had on June 19 reserved its order on the petition.

The petitioner had alleged that the Section Officers of the Registry give preference to some law firms and influential advocates for reasons best known to them.

The petitioner had highlighted in his petition instances where the Registry and its sections Officers immediately cleared and listed non categorized cases in late hours without pointing out defects and following procedure as per notification.

The petitioner had further alleged that the Registry and its Section Officers take several days to check and point out the defects if it is filed by an ordinary petitioner or lawyer, however they list  the cases within few minutes by ignoring the defects and procedure if, it is filed by any influential lawyer or petitioner.

It had further alleged that the registry has harassed the petitioner by demanding excess fee and charges and pointing out unnecessary and false defects with an intention to delay the cases and has also illegally de-tagged the matter by ignoring the direction of the Supreme Court.

Seeing the disparity and discrimination on the part of Registry, the petitioner made a complaint to Secretary General of the Supreme Court against the illegal activities of Registry, however the Registry did not respond to the Secretary Generals notice.

The petitioner being member of SCBA, also requested to Secretary /executive members of SCBA against the Registry for not listing the said Writ Petition. Seeing partiality in the part of Registry, the SCBA drafted a Resolution against the illegal activities and discrimination in part of Registry which is still pending.

Read the order here;

-India Legal Bureau