Appointment of law officers in court again

The HC has directed the Government to file its counter on a plea seeking to quash its order on “appointment of law officers of Madras HC and its Madurai Bench (Appointment) Rules 2017” as illegal, arbitrary, discriminatory and in defiance of the judgements of the Supreme Court.

The summer vacation division bench, comprising Justices R Mahadevan and M Govindaraj, before whom the PIL moved by an advocate V Vasanthakumar came up on Wednesday, directed the chief secretary, to file the counter within four weeks. 

The petitioner contended that the state instead of devising a mechanism for selecting the law officers based on the principles laid down by the SC, had left it to the wisdom of the advocate-general to select the law officers. It may be noted that based on his earlier plea seeking to appoint law knowing persons and not those based on political affiliations as law officers, a division bench headed by the then CJ SK Kaul, now elevated to the SC, had appointed an amicus to draft the rules. 

But, subsequently Justice HG Ramesh, who took over as the acting CJ, had disposed a batch of writ petitions in this regard including the one filed by the present petitioner on the basis that the issue falls under the government domain.