Supreme Court creates history, appoints 11 women senior advocates in a day

Supreme Court created history and appointed 11 women lawyers as senior advocates in a day on Friday. Previously, only 12 women lawyers have been given the status of senior advocates of the Supreme Court.

The 11 women lawyers are Karuna Nundy, Liz Mathew, Shobha Gupta, Swarupama Chaturvedi, Uttara Babbar, Haripriya Padmanabhan, Archana Pathak Dave, Shirin Khajuria, NS Nappinai, S Janani, and Nisha Bagchi.

The Supreme Court on Friday designated 56 lawyers and advocate-on-record (AoR) as senior advocates.

"The Chief Justice of India and the judges of the Supreme Court of India in a full court meeting held on Friday, January 19, 2024, have been pleased to designate the following advocates-on record/advocates as senior advocates with effect from January 19, 2024…," said a notification issued by the apex court.

Advocates Gaurav Agrawal, Shobha Gupta, Mohd Shoeb Alam, Amit Anand Tiwari, Swarupama Chaturvedi, Ardhendumauli Kumar Prasad, Sunil Fernandes, Tapesh Kumar Singh and Gagan Gupta are among the lawyers, who have been designated as senior advocates.

Besides this, the apex court also gets 198 new AoRs.

Chief Justice of India D Y Chandrachud congratulated the newly enrolled AoRs after the day's court proceedings. Justice Chandrachud expressed happiness that several women lawyers have cleared the AoR examination.

According to the rules framed by the Supreme Court under Article 145 of the Constitution, only advocates designated as advocate-on-record can file cases in the apex court, which conducts AoR examinations twice a year.

(with PTI inputs)