The Madras High Court on Tuesday, July 2, 2024 said lawyers cannot be permitted to use prefixes such as Lieutenant Colonel before their names in the Vakalatnama (authorisation given by a litigant to a lawyer to appear on his/her behalf), cause list (list of cases to be heard by a court) and other such court documents.
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A Division Bench of Justices S.M. Subramaniam and C. Kumarappan said, all lawyers are equal before the courts of law irrespective of their having been Ministers or continuing to be Members of Parliament, Members of the Legislative Assembly or even having been conferred with Padma awards and so on.
Therefore, it would not be appropriate on the part of lawyers to use a prefix or suffix before their names in documents filed before the courts. Their names should appear in the Vakalatnama and the cause list only as they had been registered in the rolls of the Bar Council concerned, the Bench said.
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Justice Subramaniam also pointed out that a Constitution Bench of the Supreme Court had dealt with the issue in Balaji Raghavan versus Union of India in 1995. Then, the court had held that Bharat Ratna and Padma awards were not titles and that they should not be used either as prefixes or suffixes failing which the awardee would have to forfeit it.
Similarly, the Ministry of Defence had also issued a circular making it clear that certain retired officers were not entitled to use prefixes before their names. Therefore, the Madras High Court Registry should not entertain the practice of allowing lawyers to add any kind of prefix before their names while filing Vakalatnama, the judge added.
He said, the prefixes should also not get reflected in the cause lists prepared by the High Court Registry and should not be used by judges as well as lawyers. “We don’t discriminate between lawyers on the basis of their previous qualifications or the posts held by them. All are equal here,” Justice Subramaniam added.