Designation of Senior Advocates in India: Constitutional Validity, Judicial Evolution, and the Changing Nature of the Designation Process

This article examines the constitutional validity and evolution of Senior Advocate designation in India, tracing the shift from discretionary selection to the quantitative framework of Indira Jaising and the qualitative, Full Court-oriented approach under Jitender v. State (NCT of Delhi) and the 2026 Guidelines.

Introduction

The Senior Advocate designation is a mark of professional pre-eminence and an institutional endorsement by the highest courts. Yet, the very features that make it valuable also make its conferment constitutionally delicate. Because the distinction is conferred by Constitutional Courts exercising an administrative power, and carries real consequences for the market for legal services, its conferment cannot be a matter of unstructured grace; it must answer to the Constitution.

Section 16, Advocates Act, 1961 recognises two classes of advocates — Senior Advocates and other advocates — and empowers the Supreme Court and the High Courts to confer the senior distinction on an advocate who, in the court’s opinion, is deserving of it by virtue of ability, standing at the Bar, or special knowledge or experience in law, with the advocate’s consent.¹ Around this spare provision has grown an elaborate jurisprudence, driven largely by the 2015 writ petition of Senior Advocate Indira Jaising.²

The statutory classification and institution of Senior Advocates are constitutionally sustainable as a professional distinction rather than a prohibited constitutional title; however, the exercise of the power of designation remains permanently subject to the constitutional standards of fairness, transparency, rationality, and non-arbitrariness. The judicial journey from the pre-Indira Jaising discretionary model, through the quantitative framework of 2017, to the qualitative Full Court-oriented approach adopted after Jitender v. State (NCT of Delhi)³ in 2025 and crystallised in the 2026 Guidelines, demonstrates that the process has continuously evolved in response to changing institutional concerns.

The statutory and constitutional framework

1. Section 16: The anatomy of the power

Section 16 does three things. First, it creates two classes of advocates. Second, it fixes the criteria for elevation to the senior class — ability, standing at the Bar, and special knowledge or experience in law. Third, it makes conferment conditional on the advocate’s consent, and [through Section 16(3) and the Rules] attaches certain restrictions to the practice of a Senior Advocate. The statutory criteria are therefore threefold, and the discretion is not at large; it is a discretion to be exercised only upon due satisfaction that the advocate answers to those three descriptors.⁴

A textual feature of Section 16(2) that later assumed decisive importance is that it speaks of the court forming an opinion and conferring the distinction. It does not, on its face, contemplate an advocate applying or an individual Judge recommending a candidate; the decision is, in its statutory conception, a collective act of the court.⁵

2. Two distinct constitutional questions

It is tempting to say either that Articles 14 and 18 render the institution suspect, or that they “do not apply” at all. Both formulations are inaccurate. The correct approach separates two questions that operate at different levels:

(a) The validity of the classification and institution.— Does the statutory division of advocates into two classes, and the power to designate, offend the equality clause of Article 14 or the prohibition of titles in Article 18?

(b) The constitutional discipline of the process.— Assuming the institution is valid, does the manner in which the power is exercised — the criteria, the procedure, the decision-making — conform to the guarantee of non-arbitrariness that Article 14 imposes on every State action, including the administrative acts of Constitutional Courts?

The first question is answered in favour of validity; the second is never finally answered, because it is answered afresh each time the process is redesigned. The 2025 Bench proceeded on exactly this footing: it treated designation as an administrative function of the court, “subject to the scrutiny of Article 14”, reasoning that confining designation to advocates in the Constitutional Courts would expose Section 16(2) to “the vice of arbitrariness which is prohibited under Article 14”.⁶

3. Article 14: Reasonable classification and non-arbitrariness

Article 14 operates through two tests. The classical test permits classification resting on an intelligible differentia bearing a rational nexus to the object sought. The broader strand, flowing from E.P. Royappa v. State of T.N. and Maneka Gandhi v. Union of India, treats arbitrariness as antithetical to equality, so that State action — including administrative action — must be fair, reasonable, and non-arbitrary.⁷

4. Article 18: distinction, not title

Article 18(1) abolishes all titles save military and academic distinctions. The objection is that “Senior Advocate”, carrying tangible privileges, is a State-conferred title in the guise of a professional label. The Supreme Court rejected this in Indira Jaising v. Supreme Court of India (Indira Jaising-I), holding the designation “is hardly a title, it is a distinction; a recognition,” comparable to describing a physician as a “Consultant” or “Senior Surgeon” — expressions recognising proven talent rather than conferring the hereditary or honorific status Article 18 was meant to abolish.⁸

5. The holding on validity in Indira Jaising-I

The apprehended abuses — judicial indulgence towards seniors, high fees, adverse effects on juniors, anti-competitiveness — were characterised as “untoward consequences occasioned by human failures”, and the court held that the possibility of misuse cannot render a statutory provision constitutionally fragile. So long as the classification rests on reasonable parameters reducible to uniform guidelines, Section 16 is not constitutionally impermissible.⁹

The decisive move in 2017 was not the vindication of validity — largely predictable — but the court’s acceptance that the process required constitutional repair. Having upheld the institution, it laid down uniform norms precisely because an unstructured, opaque process could not be squared with the anti-arbitrariness guarantee.

Before Indira Jaising-I: The traditional discretionary model

1. Historical roots

The Indian institution of Senior Advocates descends from the English Bar. The distinguished class of senior pleaders known as serjeants-at-law can be traced back to the thirteenth century; over time, the pre-eminent advocates came to be appointed as King’s or Queen’s counsel — the “silks.”¹⁰ The Advocates Act, consolidated and reformed the legal profession in independent India and, in Section 16, retained a statutory version of this two-tier structure, empowering the Supreme Court and the High Courts to confer the senior distinction. The English parallel is instructive because the United Kingdom itself, after criticism of opacity and nepotism, moved in 2004—2005 to a reformed, independently scrutinised Queen’s counsel appointment system based on published competencies and objective criteria — a reform that the 2017 Bench expressly surveyed.

2. The pre-2017 practice in India

Before 2017, the designation regime suffered from three connected deficiencies. First, there was no uniform national mechanism; the Supreme Court and each High Court followed their own practices. Second, decision-making in the Supreme Court proceeded through Full Court deliberation followed by a secret ballot, untethered to any articulated criteria and disclosing no reasons. Third, the process was opaque, with no published basis for designating one advocate over another.¹¹

This was the state of affairs that Indira Jaising challenged in her 2015 writ petition under Article 32, contending that the vote-based method was arbitrary and contrary to diversity, violating Articles 14, 15 and 21, and seeking a permanent selection committee with a secretariat and a point-based assessment. Significantly, she did not seek to strike down Section 16 or the corresponding Rule: her attack was on the process, not the institution.¹²

Indira Jaising-I (2017): The institutional and quantitative model

1. The court and the issues

A three-Judge Bench of Gogoi, Nariman and Navin Sinha, JJ. decided the matter on 12 October 2017.¹³ Having upheld the validity of Section 16, the Court addressed the central procedural question: How to make the exercise uniform, objective and transparent across the Supreme Court and every High Court, absent statutory rules under the Advocates Act.

2. Article 142 and the source of the uniform norms

Because Parliament had framed no rules and the High Court guidelines were divergent, the 2017 Bench laid down uniform norms of its own. The judgment did not, in terms, invoke Article 142; that characterisation came later. The Bench in Jitender @ Kalla described the 2017 exercise as undertaken in the plenary jurisdiction under Article 142 to ensure transparency — “an experiment” that was “never intended to be final or understood as [a] substitute [for] Statutory Rules under the Advocates Act”.¹⁴ That characterisation is doubly important: it locates the authority for a judicially-designed, pan-India procedure in Article 142; and, because the norms were a reserved and continuing jurisdiction rather than a final adjudication, it left open the possibility of later “course correction”.

3. The 2017 Guidelines

The Court laid down a set of uniform norms — commonly numbered as the eleven guidelines in para 73 — to govern the designation exercise henceforth in the Supreme Court and all High Courts. Their principal elements were:

(a) Permanent Committee.— A “Committee for Designation of Senior Advocates”, headed by the Chief Justice of India (or High Court Chief Justice) and comprising the two seniormost Judges, the Attorney General (or Advocate General), and a fifth member of the Bar nominated by the other four.

(b) Permanent Secretariat.— A secretariat to receive applications and written proposals of Judges, and to compile data on the reputation, conduct, integrity, pro bono work, and reported judgments of each candidate.

(c) Publication and stakeholder input.— Proposals to be published on the official website of the court, inviting the views of other stakeholders.

(d) Point-based overall assessment.— The Committee to interview each candidate and make an overall assessment on a 100-point scale (set out below).

(e) Full Court decision.— All names cleared by the Committee to go to the Full Court, which would ordinarily avoid a secret ballot except where unavoidable, decisions being carried by a majority.

(f) Review and recall.— Unsuccessful candidates to be reconsidered after two years; and a designation liable to be recalled where the Full Court finds subsequent conduct disentitling the advocate to continue holding it.

(g) Minimum eligibility.— A minimum of ten years’ practice; the Court declined to prescribe any minimum income or age, reasoning that income depends on the field of practice and that a ten-year threshold (mirroring Article 217) was preferable to an age bar.

The 100-point matrix (para 73.7)

Head of assessment	Points
Number of years of practice (10 pts for 10—20 years; 20 pts beyond 20 years)	20
Judgments (reported and unreported) reflecting the advocate’s legal formulations; pro bono work; domain expertise across branches of law	40
Publications by the applicant advocate	15
Test of personality and suitability on the basis of interview/interaction	25
Total	100
Source: Indira Jaising-I, para 73.7.

4. Critical assessment of the 2017 model

The strengths of the 2017 framework were real and widely welcomed: It introduced uniformity across a fragmented landscape, an audit trail of data collection, publication and consultation, and—above all—an articulated, criteria-based basis for a decision previously taken by unreasoned ballot.

But the model carried three latent weaknesses. First, it quietly transformed the character of the exercise: Designation had historically recognised an advocate whose standing was already evident, but the point matrix reframed it as a scored selection from among applicants—closer to a competitive appointment than an acknowledgment of merit. Second, it introduced an interview carrying a quarter of the marks — which, as the 2025 Bench noted, the petitioner herself had never sought.¹⁵ Third, it assumed that qualities as elusive as “ability” and “standing” could be reduced to numbers, yet assigned no points to character, honesty, and integrity — arguably the most important qualities of all.

Indira Jaising-II (2023): Modification of the framework

The 2017 scheme was refined, but not restructured, in Indira Jaising v. Supreme Court of India [Indira Jaising (II)], decided on 12 May 2023 by a three-Judge Bench of Kaul, Amanullah, and Aravind Kumar, JJ., on applications to modify the guidelines.¹⁶

The debate centred on four issues — secret ballot, cut-off marks, points for publications, and the interview. The court made three principal modifications: it confined the secret ballot to exceptional cases with reasons recorded; reduced publication points from 15 to 5 while widening their scope to teaching and guest lectures; and increased points for judgments, pro bono work, and domain expertise from 40 to 50.¹⁷

Beyond the arithmetic, Indira Jaising-II made qualitative refinements: A lawyer’s role in a case was to be judged by the substance of the assistance rendered rather than by a count of appearances; candidates could submit their five best synopses; concessions were introduced for tribunal specialists; and the Court emphasised diversity, particularly gender balance and first-generation lawyers, by directing an annual exercise and no rigid age bar of 45.¹⁸

It described designation as “a privilege awarded as a mark of excellence” — a characterisation the 2025 referral would probe — and reiterated that “the process of improvement is continuous”, preserving the reserved power to reconsider. Structurally, however, it left the point-and-interview architecture intact.

Jitender @ Kalla (2025): Reconsideration of the point-based system

1. The referral: The order of 20 February 2025

It began in a criminal appeal — a bail matter — in which the conduct of a Senior Advocate, reflected in the court’s record, led a Division Bench of Abhay Oka and Ujjal Bhuyan, JJ. to ask a larger question: Whether the Indira Jaising regime had in fact ensured that only deserving advocates were designated, and whether it needed reconsideration.¹⁹

In para 43 of its order dated 20 February 2025, the Division Bench flagged a series of doubts for the Chief Justice: whether Section 16(2), which contemplates conferment by the court rather than application by the advocate, permits an application-driven process at all; whether subjecting an advocate of standing to a brief interview “compromis[es] the dignity of the advocate”; and whether a points system deriving merit largely from years of practice and one-quarter from an interview could reliably identify the deserving. It asked that these be placed before “an appropriate larger Bench”.²⁰

2. Constitution of the Bench and the coordinate Bench question

Because both Indira Jaising decisions were rendered by three-Judge Benches, the Chief Justice constituted a three-Judge Bench Oka, Ujjal Bhuyan and S.V.N. Bhatti, JJ. to hear the flagged issues with pending applications.²¹

This exposes a doctrinal point the label “larger Bench” obscures: a three-Judge Bench cannot ordinarily overrule the ratio of a coordinate three-Judge Bench. The 2025 Bench navigated this not by claiming superior authority but by locating its power in the reserved jurisdiction the earlier decisions had created. Para 74 of the Indira Jaising-I and para 51 of the Indira Jaising-II had expressly contemplated reconsideration “by suitable additions/deletions in the light of experience”. Deleting para 73.7, the Court reasoned, “will not amount to review or recall” but is a course correction that reserved power both permits and requires; and since the norms were an Article 142 experiment, not a final adjudication, they were always open to revision.²²

The reasoning is elegant, but not beyond criticism. Treating the wholesale abandonment of the point-and-interview architecture as a mere “addition/deletion” arguably stretches the reserved power: dismantling para 73.7 and the Permanent Committee’s composition is a change of model, not a marginal adjustment. Yet, the characterisation is defensible, because the 2017 norms rested on Article 142 rather than any binding interpretation of Section 16, and the earlier Benches had invited exactly this revisiting.

3. The critique of the quantitative model

On the merits, the Bench mounted a systematic critique of the 100-point overall assessment.

(a) Participation of the Bar in decision-making.— Under Section 16(2), the decision is the court’s, exercised administratively through the Full Court, which may delegate to a Committee of Judges; but it is doubtful how Bar members can share in the actual decision by assigning points. Consultation with senior members of the Bar is one thing; their participation in decision-making, the Court held, “cannot be supported by law”.²³

(b) Duration of practice.— Awarding up to 20 marks merely for years at the Bar rewards longevity, not merit; an advocate “not up to the mark” could collect a fifth of the total simply by surviving. “The length of practice cannot be a rational criterion”, the Court held; it “will help those who do not deserve designation”.²⁴

(c) The interview.— A few minutes cannot assess personality; the interview gives “at best an outer view”, rewards the articulate over the meritorious, and turns a quarter of the marks. Most pointedly, the court held that subjecting an advocate of standing “to interview by three seniormost Judges and two senior members of the Bar violates the dignity of the noble profession”.²⁵

(d) Judgments, synopses, and publications.— Assigning up to 50 marks for judgments and written submissions is unworkable: it is often impossible to say which submission in a judgment was made by which of many advocates, and synopses may be team products. Nor could three seniormost Judges realistically read the voluminous material, which could not be outsourced — so the process became highly subjective. Publications, worth 5 marks, are “an additional consideration”, not an essential criterion.²⁶

(e) The omission of character.— Decisively, the court observed that “no specific points have been assigned for the character, honesty, and integrity”, and concluded that the assessment “can hardly be objective” and “has not achieved the desired objective”.²⁷

4. Re-reading Section 16: Consent, applications and recommendations

Since the court cannot designate without consent, and individually canvassing a large Bar is impractical, the practice of applications may continue — but reconceived: applying is treated as the advocate’s consent to be considered, not a solicitation of the distinction. The Full Court may equally designate a deserving advocate who has not applied, after consent. And because designation is a collective decision, no individual Judge may recommend a candidate in writing.²⁸

On diversity, the Court held that designation cannot be “the monopoly of the selected few”: High Courts must evolve mechanisms to consider advocates before trial and District Courts and Tribunals, whose role is “no inferior” to that of counsel in the Constitutional Courts — failing which Section 16(2) would be exposed to arbitrariness under Article 14.²⁹

5. The operative directions

The Court’s conclusions (para 87) may be summarised as follows:

(a) Para 73.7 of the Indira Jaising-I as amended by the Indira Jaising-II — the point-based matrix — shall not be implemented.

(b) All High Courts to frame or amend Rules within four months, keeping in view the guidelines that follow.

(c) The decision to confer designation shall be the Full Court’s; all eligible applications, with documents, are placed before the Full House, with an endeavour at consensus, failing which a democratic vote, secret ballot left to the High Court’s discretion.

(d) The ten-year minimum practice requirement needs no reconsideration.

(e) The practice of applications may continue as a form of consent; the Full Court may additionally designate dehors an application in a deserving case.

(f) There is no scope for individual Judges to recommend candidates.

(g) At least one designation exercise every calendar year; the Permanent Secretariat continues to process applications and collect data; and the Supreme Court will amend its own Rules. Pending processes continue under the old regime, but no new process until fresh Rules are framed.³⁰

The court added that its own view remained subject to the same reserved power of periodic review — no designation system being ever “perfect” —the endeavour being to ensure that “not a single deserving Advocate is left out … and not a single undeserving person is designated”.³¹

The present framework: The 2026 Guidelines and High Court Rules

The now-governing position at the Supreme Court is set by the Guidelines for Designation of Senior Advocates by the Supreme Court of India, 2026, in supersession of the 2023 framework and pursuant to Jitender @ Kalla.³²

The 2026 Guidelines translate the Jitender @ Kalla directions into a working procedure. Their salient features are:

1. A reconstituted, purely Judicial Committee.— Designation is handled by a Committee comprising only the Chief Justice of India as Chairperson and the two seniormost Judges. The Attorney General and the nominated Bar member — part of the 2017 Committee — are dropped, reflecting the holding that Bar members cannot participate in decision-making under Section 16(2).

2. Continuing Secretariat and annual exercise.— A Permanent Secretariat, its composition decided by the Chief Justice, processes applications and collects data; the exercise is initiated at least once a year by inviting applications online, with a minimum of 21 days to apply.

3. Publication and consultation.— The Secretariat compiles data on candidates’ reputation, conduct, and integrity; proposals are published on the court’s website, with at least 15 days for stakeholder views, before being placed before the Full Court.

4. Eligibility.— A minimum of ten years’ standing as an advocate (or ten years’ combined standing as an advocate and as a District and Sessions Judge or Tribunal Judicial Member); practice mainly in the Supreme Court, with relaxation for domain experts before specialised Tribunals; and, notably, attainment of 45 years of age unless relaxed by the Full Court — reviving, as the ordinary rule, the age line Indira Jaising-II had declined to impose rigidly. Former Chief Justices and High Court Judges may seek designation by request-cum-consent letter, but not while holding a full-time assignment.

5. No points, no interview-holistic assessment.— The matrix and interview are gone. Candidates are assessed holistically under the three statutory heads: ability (knowledge of law, advocacy, legal writing, publications, and the capacity to critique judicial decisions); standing at the Bar (fairness, decorum, professional ethics, mentoring, pro bono work, honesty, and integrity, with no criminal antecedents or punishment for moral turpitude, contempt, or misconduct); and special knowledge or experience in law. The enumerated factors are expressly “illustrative in nature and not exhaustive”.

6. Full Court decision by consensus.— All eligible applications go to the Full Court; the decision is by consensus, failing which by majority, with a secret ballot only in exceptional situations for reasons recorded. The Full Court may designate an advocate who has not applied, subject to consent; unsuccessful applications may be reviewed after two years, and a designation may be recalled for subsequent disentitling conduct.³³

A point easily missed, confirmed by the prescribed application form, is that abolishing the matrix did not abolish the collection of the underlying data. Candidates must still furnish their reported and unreported judgments, pro bono and amicus work, publications, teaching, domain expertise, first-generation status, and even net professional income. What has changed is the use made of the material: it now informs a holistic Full Court assessment rather than being converted into marks. Two consequences follow: First, the procedural discipline of the objective era — systematic, verifiable data collection — survives intact; only the quantification is gone. Second, income, which Indira Jaising-I declined to treat as a condition of eligibility, reappears not as a threshold but as one factor before the Full Court, as Jitender @ Kalla envisaged.³⁴

At the level of the High Courts, the four-month direction in Jitender @ Kalla set in motion a wave of rule-making.³⁵

Two transitional points bear notice. First, because the Supreme Court and each High Court frame their own rules, a period of asymmetry is inevitable-a partial return of the non-uniformity that Indira Jaising-I set out to cure, now within a common template of principles. Second, the reforms have unfolded alongside active judicial review of individual High Court exercises, underscoring that the process remains justiciable for arbitrariness.

How the concept of designation has changed over time

The most illuminating way to read this decade of litigation is not case by case but as a movement along several axes. Six phases can be identified.

Phase I — Traditional Discretionary Model.

Phase II — Demand for Transparency and Uniformity.

Phase III — Indira Jaising-I (2017): Institutional and Quantitative Assessment.

Phase IV — Indira Jaising-II (2023): Modification.

Phase V — Jitender @ Kalla (2025): Reconsideration.

Phase VI — Present Framework (2026): Qualitative, Institutional, Full Court-Oriented Assessment.

Across these phases, designation has shifted along six tensions, weighted differently over time: from recognition to selection, and part-way back; from judicial discretion to objective criteria and back to structured judgment; from quantitative to qualitative evaluation; from an externally-informed committee towards a purely institutional Full Court decision; from transparency towards a renewed insistence on professional dignity; and from imposed uniformity towards respect for each court’s autonomy to frame its own rules within common principles.

The 2026 framework is not a return to the pre-2017 world; it retains the Secretariat, data collection, publication and consultation, annual exercises, review and recall, and — crucially — the requirement that decisions be reasoned enough to survive Article 14 scrutiny. The better reading is dialectical: the discretionary thesis of Phase I provoked the quantitative antithesis of Phase III, and the present framework is a synthesis keeping the objective era’s discipline while discarding its false precision.

Critical constitutional analysis

1. Title, status, distinction, or institutional recognition?

Is the designation a title, a status, a professional distinction, or an institutional recognition? It is a professional distinction that operates as an institutional recognition, and emphatically not a title in the Article 18 sense. It is functional: it attaches to demonstrated attributes, is revocable for misconduct, confers no social precedence outside the courtroom, and mirrors recognitions in other learned professions.³⁶

2. Reasonable classification

Does the classification satisfy Article 14? Applying the classical test, the intelligible differentia is possession, in a marked degree, of the three statutory qualities — ability, standing, and special knowledge or experience — that equip an advocate to render superior assistance to the court. The rational nexus is the advancement of the administration of justice: A Bar with a recognised class of pre-eminent counsel enhances the assistance available to the courts. That the differentia is real is confirmed, negatively, by Jitender @ Kalla warning that confining the class to Constitutional Court advocates — ignoring able trial, district and tribunal practitioners — would itself create an irrational sub-classification vulnerable under Article 14.³⁷

3. The process and the anti-arbitrariness guarantee

Can the process be challenged for arbitrariness even if the classification is valid? It can — and this is the pivot of the subject. The exercise of the power is an administrative function of the court, and administrative action is subject to the non-arbitrariness guarantee. The petitioner in Jitender @ Kalla pressed exactly this — that designation, being administrative, is subject to Article 14 and no power may remain unguided — and the court accepted it, both in dismantling a system it found subjective and in insisting on inclusivity. The validity of the institution never immunises the process; it merely relocates the inquiry from the vires of Section 16 to the rationality of its implementation.³⁸

It is wrong to say Articles 14 and 18 are simply “inapplicable”. Article 18 is applicable but not offended, the designation being a distinction rather than a title. Article 14 is applicable at both levels: satisfied at the level of classification, and operating as a continuing constraint on process. The classification is constitutionally settled; the procedure is constitutionally supervised.

4. Right, privilege, or discretionary institutional decision?

Designation is not a right; no advocate can demand the gown, and its conferment turns on the court’s opinion. It is a discretionary institutional recognition — a privilege, in the language of Indira Jaising-II, conferred as a mark of excellence. But discretion does not place it beyond the law: precisely because it is discretionary and consequential, it must be structured — guided by intelligible criteria, exercised through fair procedure, and open to judicial review for arbitrariness.

5. Necessary safeguards

What safeguards keep power from becoming arbitrary? The jurisprudence suggests a minimum set: (i) published, intelligible criteria anchored in the three statutory descriptors; (ii) systematic data collection through a permanent secretariat; (iii) publication of proposals and a genuine opportunity for stakeholder input; (iv) consent of the advocate; (v) a collective Full Court decision, avoiding domination by individual preference; (vi) a preference for consensus, with voting — ordinarily open-only where consensus fails; (vii) periodic, at least annual, exercises; (viii) review of unsuccessful cases and recall for misconduct; and (ix) continuing judicial review. The 2026 Guidelines and emerging High Court rules embody most of these; their adequacy will be tested in practice.

6. Has the evolution struck the right balance?

The case for the present framework is strong. Quantifying imponderables such as “ability” and “standing” produced a false objectivity. A holistic, collective judgment by those best placed to assess advocacy, taken transparently and for recorded reasons where votes are cast, more honestly reflects what the statute asks.

The case against is equally serious. The 2017—2023 reforms were prompted by the opacity of unstructured Full Court decision-making; abandoning objective criteria risks reopening the door to subjectivity, favouritism and the very lack of a stated basis Article 14 condemns. Critics argue, with force, that the reform trades measurable objectivity for unreviewable discretion, and that the answer to a flawed rubric was to fix it — score integrity, weight length less, professionalise the reading of judgments — not to discard measurement.³⁹

On balance, the evolution has improved the candour of the exercise while leaving its accountability more dependent on institutional good faith than a critic would wish.

Conclusion

This article has argued that the subject is best understood by holding two questions apart. The institution — the classification of advocates and the power to confer the distinction — is constitutionally sustainable: it is a professional distinction and institutional recognition, not a prohibited title under Article 18, resting on a reasonable classification with a rational nexus to the administration of justice under Article 14. The process, by contrast, remains constitutionally supervised: because the power is an administrative function, its exercise must satisfy fairness, transparency and non-arbitrariness — and it is that guarantee, not any doubt about the institution, that has driven a decade of reform.

The journey from the discretionary model, through the quantitative framework of Indira Jaising-I and its refinement in Indira Jaising-II, to the qualitative Full Court approach of Jitender @ Kalla and the 2026 Guidelines is not the vacillation of an uncertain court but the working-out of a genuinely hard problem: how to make a discretionary recognition both objective and dignified, accountable and humane. The point-based experiment failed not because objectivity is undesirable but because it bought the appearance of objectivity at the cost of measuring the wrong things and omitting the most important. The present synthesis keeps the objective era’s procedural discipline — data, publication, consultation, annual exercises, review, recall — while returning the ultimate judgment to those best placed to make it.

Whether the synthesis endures will depend less on doctrine than on institutional practice: Whether Full Courts record honest reasons, weigh integrity and inclusivity in earnest, and remain open to judicial review of their own processes. The constitutional standard is settled; the constitutional performance must be renewed with every designation exercise. The senior gown is secure, but the process by which it is conferred can never be finally settled — it must, as the court itself has acknowledged, keep improving in the light of experience.