Re. Application of Mr. Mohit Kumar Gupta Advocate for Registration as Advocate on Record (Supreme Court of India)
Introduction: The Supreme Court of India’s recent decision in Gopal Jha Vs. The Hon’ble Supreme Court of India W.P. (Civil) 745 of 2018 and Miscellaneous Application Diary No. 4565/2024 has shed light on a critical aspect of the legal profession: the date of registration as an Advocate-on-Record (AOR) and its implications for inter-se seniority among AORs. This case has significant implications, particularly for chamber allotment at the Supreme Court. The petitioner’s struggle, Mohit Kumar Gupta, underscores the importance of this issue and its broader impact on the legal community.
In a first of its kind, the Supreme Court of India has ordered on 02 February, 2024 its own administration, commonly known as registry, to register an Advocate as Advocate-on-Record (AOR) from a retrospective date i.e. 19 January, 2024, who claimed to have lost seniority against other AORs despite securing the coveted second (2nd) rank in the Advocate-on-Record Examination 2023. The petitioner is Mohit Kumar Gupta, who happens to be just another practising Advocate and a non-practising Chartered Accountant, appeared for the Advocate-on-Record Examination conducted by the Supreme Court of India in June 2023, whose results were declared in the month of December 2023 making 199 advocates eligible to start their journey as a special class of advocates in the Supreme Court. But, the question comes as to what happened and why the ‘Date of Registration’ as an Advocate-on-Record is so special as it became the contentious point only for the petitioner and not for the other 198 advocates.
