The Supreme Court today pronounced judgment on a miscellaneous application filed by SCAORA and SCBA, addressing concerns regarding the recording of appearances of advocates in the Apex Court.

The Bench of Justice Bela M. Trivedi and Justice Satish Chandra Sharma noted that there has been a troubling practice of marking numerous advocate appearances in case records without proper verification of their physical presence or authorization to represent a party.

"As the court had found misuse of abuse of process of law, but had also found fraud prima facie being committed at the instance of the party, litigants, and the Advocates involved. The other reason to giving such direction, was that the Court had noticed a very strange practice being followed in the Supreme Court regarding marking the presence of a number of Advocates for a party without anybody verifying or certifying whether they all are authorized to appear for that party or not. In most of the matters, simple or complicated a number of appearances of the Advocates would be shown in record proceedings running into pages and pages, without any verification as to whether such Advocates were present in the Court or, in fact, were authorized to appear for a particular party in the case or not," the Bench remarked.

The Court observed that although an Advocate listed on any Bar Council roll is entitled to appear before the Supreme Court, his appearance must strictly adhere to the Supreme Court Rules, 2013, as amended in 2019.

“We cannot resist ourselves from observing that every Vakalatnama or Memorandum of appearance filed in the case by the Advocate on Record, there is lots of responsibility and accountability,” the Bench stated.

For regulating the practice and the procedure of the Supreme Court, it has directed as follows:

1. Valakakatnama is executed in the presence of AOR. He shall be certified that it was executed in his presence.

2. The AOR shall furnish the details as required by the appearance slip, prescribed in Form No. 30, through the link provided on the website, as mentioned in the notice dates 30th December 2022, issued by the Supreme Court.

3. The respective court masters shall ensure to record appearances of only Senior Advocate, AoRs or Advocates who are physically present and arguing in the court at the time of the hearing of the matter and one advocate or AOR each for assistance in Court.

4. If there is any change in the authorisation of the Senior Advocate or AoR or Advocates, after submission of the appearance slip, described in Form No. 30, it shall be duty of the concerned AOR to submit an appearance slip afresh to the concerned court master, informing him about such change, and the concerned court master shall record the appearance of such Advocates accordingly in the record of proceedings.

5. A Senior Advocate shall not appear without an AOR in the Supreme Court.

Subject to these modifications, the Court disposed of the miscellaneous applications and directed the Office to ensure strict compliance with the updated procedures.

Cause Title: Supreme Court Bar Association v. State of Uttar Pradesh [MA 3-4/2025 in Crl.A. No. 3883-3884/2024; Diary No. 48169/2024]

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Justice Bela M TrivediJustice Satish Chandra SharmaSupreme Court

Sukriti Mishra

    Sukriti Mishra was a Legal Correspondent at Verdictum. She covered the Supreme Court. She completed her graduation with BA. LL.B (Hons.) from The ICFAI University, Dehradun. Sukriti started covering courts in March 2022. She had previously worked with another legal news portal, where she covered the Delhi High Court and Trial Courts.