New Delhi: The Delhi High Court Wednesday gave the Centre three months to examine issues and formulate a policy for empanelling lawyers who have experience of less than a year to litigate for government bodies.
A bench of Chief Justice D.K. Upadhyaya and Justice Tushar Rao Gedela were hearing a petition filed by law student Vishal Sharma challenging a 11 September notification issued by the Ministry of Law and Justice appointing 38 Central government standing counsels (CGSCs) for the Delhi High Court, along with 418 senior panel counsels and 252 government pleaders.
The plea points out that the list includes relatives of sitting High Court judges and leaders from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). For instance, Himanshu Bidhuri, the son of South Delhi MP Ramesh Bidhuri, is among the new senior panel counsels. The list of 38 CGSCs also features advocate Amrita Prakash, who is married to BJP’s Laxmi Nagar MLA Abhay Verma from Delhi.
The empanelment of lawyers is the official process whereby the government releases a list of advocates who are eligible to receive cases and litigate for government bodies and corporations on behalf of the government.
Appearing virtually, Solicitor General Tushar Mehta assured the court that the government would frame guidelines on the issue. He pointed out that “some of the facts (in the petition) are correct and some aren’t”.
The FGLA petition
In a related but separate petition filed 25 November by the First Generation Lawyers Association (FGLA), the petitioners urged the Delhi HC to direct the central government to place on record the empanelment process, “including the criteria adopted, marking sheets, evaluation mechanism, objections (if any), and the material considered” for preparing the November 2026 panel list.
It also requested the court to order or direct to quash this list of lawyers as “it includes persons who are ineligible and who do not fulfil the notified, statutory, or policy-based eligibility criteria”.
Furthermore, they asked the court to direct the central government to “frame and notify a transparent, objective and uniform set of eligibility criteria for appointment/engagement of Central Government Counsel before the Hon’ble Supreme Court, including minimum experience, case-handling exposure, AIBE qualification, domain knowledge, and demonstrable competence”.
It also asked the court to direct the central government to place on record “the list of all advocates who applied… the evaluation applied to each, and the minutes/notings that led to the selection of the 654 advocates under Group A panel, so that the arbitrariness and deviation from uniform standards” may be examined by the Delhi HC.
This is an updated version of the article with the change in the name of the petitioner.
(Edited by Viny Mishra)