A nervous ‘Junior Officer-of-Court’ made a wrong statement at Bar for pass over, Cost the Senior a dismissal order.

We just had our month-long vacation. The Court reopened with a fresh breed of “budding lawyers”. Lawyers who just enrolled as advocates on roll of Bar Council. Usually, the Court starts at 11 AM. We also get recess/lunch-break between 1:45 to 2:30. If any lawyer has any urgency, he can mention (or appraise) the bench at 11o’clock or at 2:30. These mentioning time is considered as “Net-practice session” for fresh lawyers. But, most of the fresh lawyers from V year law courses believe that the Moot Court competition provides a good chance to the Law students to “open up” before the Judges. As a result, most of them have no fear for making mentioning before the Court. This is a welcoming development and I considered this as a good change. Until I was told by one of the ‘learned Senior Friend’ that the “junior lawyers[1]” are taking mentioning too casually. They think that just repeating the words/request of a senior before the bench, without even reading the files or knowing the bare controversy of the case, is mentioning. In reality, the ‘junior’ must know the purpose for which he is mentioning the case; you must know while seeking urgent circulation of a matter, the urgency involved in the matter, he explained.  He also raised one serious issue that many a times ‘junior’ made incorrect statement while replying the query of the Judge. This ‘Senior’ gave me one citation[2] and asked me to read it. He told that a wrong statement of a Junior lawyer cause dismissal of an Appeal.

I must accept that there is some truth in his “opinion” about juniors. But I think it can’t be generalize that Juniors are taking Court proceedings too casually. In fact, it is about what we see and not what we read. The Courts are over-burdened; therefore, they want quick ‘mentioning’. In this quickness, the decorum of the Court and archaic language suffers. But, i must thank him for giving me the Citation which I may use against my opponent if 'his junior' makes wrong statement at Bar.

May I have your liberty:

Has the quality of bar gone down compared to the past?

Justice Chelameswar: The bar can certainly do better.

[1] The Advocates Act does not differentiate Junior Lawyer or Senior Lawyer. Please do not confuse ‘Designated Senior Counsel” with “Senior Lawyer”. Senior Lawyer is about ageing and Designation is about contribution in the field of law.

[2] 2000(7) SCALE 610; Nafar Chandra Jute Mills Ltd. Vs. United Bank of India and Ors. The Case-note of the Apex Court reads: Constitution - Pass over - False statement made by advocate for pass over - Held, nervousness would not bring to a junior advocate the thought of making the excuse of medicines - A false statement was made to keep the matter going, till Counsel could appear, which would not tolerate - Court would not tolerate false statements made to it at the Bar, whether by a junior advocate or by anybody else – Hence, appeal dismissed.

Summer of 2018!

“Law is a jealous mistress.” But we the lawyers practicing before Higher Courts in India, have a month-long summer vacation. The mistress takes a back seat. We usually travel around this time of the year. But this year a new job of my wife doesn’t allow us to leave Ahmedabad. Though I like reading books and watching Prime & Netflix Originals, this summer these two proven a strong and time – consuming company for me.

Books are my first love followed by another book-lover Khushi, my better 51%. Actually, I took reading seriously just to impress her. Otherwise, I was that 90% of “avid reader” who loves Chetan Bhagat. Ohh, I forgot to tell you that I am also a political commentator. A deep interest about Indian Politics made me join twitter. But, this Twitter consumed most of my time to understand the wary reality of trolls and the Darkness of the world comes knocking to the pixels beneath my fingers.

The summer vacation starts with Anita Gets Bail -- a book authored by Arun Shaurie. Mr. Shaurie has quite a good reputation across the political lines. Actually, he is one of the few Right leaning intellectuals. His book “The Courts and their Judgments” was a good read when I was reading my Law at M. S. University of Baroda. In his current book, he touched upon almost all the current topics which troubles Indian Judiciary such as Judge Loya Case, Kaliko Pul Case, Coup of Four Senior Most Judges of Supreme Court of India et al. The book proves ‘Confirmation bias’ to a person who sees everything is wrong with Indian Judiciary. From Backlog of cases to rot of Corruption in the system. It also raises a long-standing question of trust deficit with the Higher Judiciary. The book is a good read for lawyers and must read for the conspiracy theorist.

The Spy Chronicles—RAW, ISI and the Illusion of Peace. Unlike the title suggests, this book does not provide insights about workings of Research and Analysis Wings (RAW) and Inter-services Intelligence (ISI). It has a quite unique format, the entire book is based on conversation/dialogs between A.S.Dulat (Ex-RAW) and Asad Durrani (Ex ISI) and the talk was moderated by Mr. Aditya Sinha. Through this book, both ex-spooks share their experience about dealing of Indo-Pak relations. Much of the book revolves around Kashmir and the Policy and mistakes made by both the agencies for brought the Kashmir to where it is this days.

There we come to Supreme Whispers: Conversations with Judges of the Supreme Court of India 1980 – 1989. The book is authored by renowned scholar of constitutional & Judicial history of India, Mr. Abhinav Chandrachud. Being a first-generation lawyer, I am always curious to know the inner workings of Supreme Court corridors. The life style of Judges, Ideology of Judges, politics of Judges and reality of Judges. We are indebted to Prof. George Gadbois for having the judges not only interviewed but also the interview notes were prepared and preserved and granted permission to Mr. Chandrachud to author a book based on those notes.

And then I read The People V. Tech: How the internet is killing democracy (and how We save it) authored by Jamie Barlett. This book makes you paranoid about the reach and involvement of Artifical Intelligence in our day to day life and, how it changed our rational thought processing system. This book led to me to another book viz. Ten Arguments for Deleting your Social Media Accounts right now by Jaron Lanier. These books are must read to expand our understanding of our mind and how it is changing the decision-making power of human being by exploiting the inherent psychological fallacies of human mind.

What I believe is that the status – quo-ist self of human being are terrified with a thought to enter into unchartered territories. I don’t think that all what is written in these books are ‘a version of sceptics/paranoid’. I believe change is inevitable the modes will be changed and not ‘kernel of our socio-democratic system’.

As mentioned, the books are not the company I have had in this Summer. In this summer much of the time I spent in USA (virtually) through Person of Interest, The Good Wife, Madam Secretary, House of Cards, Wild Wild Country and the Girlfriend experience. Fleabag & McMafia took me to United Kingdom and Russia. Black Mirror & West World, I find these two very dark and unmeaningful.  

When i started writing this post, i wanted to write book reviews of the books i have read in this summer. But it bores me. Moreover, there are so many professional critiques. And as said by Carly heath of Slugline "anything more than 8 minutes bores me". And there is a research which concludes that humans' attention span is shrieking. And my attention span makes me Human!!!

Opinionated I:

Nothing is really changed. And I am writing this in context of Indian politics. Nowadays, the opinion-makers do over time to prove that the Judiciary lost its independence to the new dispensation at the helm. But if we read the History of these Institutions and democracies around globe, we can be more than convinced that what really changed is the name of the beneficiary of the establishments. The beneficiaries change and the outgoing beneficiary of previous establishment would try to paint the incumbent establishment a fascist as they are no more beneficiaries of the establishment.