The Supreme Court of India.
Credit: PTI File Photo
New Delhi: The Supreme Court has decided to issue a show cause notice to a senior advocate asking why the designation conferred upon him by the apex court should not be revoked.
The unprecedented decision comes in the wake of allegations of misconduct against senior advocate Rishi Malhotra.
A full court, convened by Chief Justice of India Sanjiv Khanna, comprising all apex court judges on the administrative side unanimously decided to issue show cause notice to him.
The top court had passed serious observations against Malhotra on February 20.
He was accused of suppressing material facts in multiple cases of premature release of prisoners aside from making misleading statements despite warnings of the top court.
The full court, which authorised its secretary general Bharat Parashar, to issue the showcause notice, said Malhotra should be given one more opportunity to explain his conduct before being stripped off the senior designation.
In its February 20 verdict, a bench of Justice Abhay S Oka and Augustine George Masih flagged his conduct in a recent case while accusing him of not disclosing that the top court had barred the convict's remission for 30 years.
Similarly, Malhotra was found by the court to have misled the apex court on other occasions.
"We make it clear that we are not recording any final finding against Rishi Malhotra, senior advocate, on the question whether his designation can be withdrawn. We leave it to the Chief Justice of India to take a call on this issue," it had said.
Malhotra was designated as a senior advocate on August 14, 2024.
The bench had then expressed "serious doubts and concerns" over its previous judgments, which laid down mandatory guidelines for conducting interviews and awarding points by a permanent committee for the purpose of granting lawyers coveted senior advocate designation by the constitutional courts.
"We mean no disrespect to the two binding decisions (by three-judge bench in Indira Jaising case in 2017 and 2023), and we are recording our concerns only to enable the Chief Justice of India,
to decide whether the doubts expressed by us need consideration by an appropriate larger bench," the bench had said.