SC judges get ₹208 per case, senior lawyers charge lakhs

SC judges get ₹208 per case, senior lawyers charge lakhs

Dhananjay.Mahapatra@timesgroup.com

New Delhi:10.07.2021

If we are looking for mockery of the principle of equal work for equal pay, we don’t have to go beyond the highest court of the land as the comparison of compensation paid to a Supreme Court judge for hearing and deciding a case and to a senior advocate for arguing it brings out the wide chasm.

An SC judge gets a salary of ₹2.5 lakh a month, which works out to approximately ₹8,333 per day, during which time he/she hears arguments from lawyers on an average of 40 cases. This translates to ₹208 per case, be it a simple appeal, a PIL on Covid issues, or one involving intricate questions of law. In contrast, a newly designated senior advocate commands a price of ₹1 lakh to ₹5 lakh for arguing a case. The services of a seasoned advocate like A M Singhvi, Kapil Sibal, Mukul Rohatgi or Harish Salve may find the litigant’s bank balance lighter by ₹10 lakh-₹20 lakh per hearing.

Each opinion of a retired CJI fetches her/him ₹10-₹20 lakh

So an SC judge, who hears and decides a case, gets ₹208 per day per case while seasoned senior advocates, who cannot guarantee a result in a case, are paid in lakhs of rupees per day per case.

Well, none of the senior advocates argue in 40 cases a day, for which an SC judge prepares every evening to be ready to listen to the legal arguments the next day.

This is the reason why many SC judges look forward to their retirement, which allows them to offer legal expertise as arbitrators, or, for that matter, provide valued opinion to corporations and multinationals on legal issues in their operations in India, or in disputes arising from contracts, agreements and MoUs.

A retired SC judge earns between ₹2 lakh and ₹5 lakh for a two-hour sitting as an arbitrator and there are some who do three sittings every day to match the earnings of a reasonably successful senior advocate. A retired Chief Justice of India commands a little more than a retired SC judge while performing the duty of an arbitrator.

In rendering an opinion, a retired SC judge gets between ₹5 lakh and ₹10 lakh while each opinion of a retired CJI fetches her/him ₹10-₹20 lakh. A retired CJI confided to TOI: “I do three to four opinions a month and earn between ₹30-50 lakh, unthinkable money for a sitting judge. I indulge in a lot of charity. And yet, I am left with an amount which is more than the provident fund money I got on retirement after rendering services for more than two decades as a judge of constitutional courts.”

Full report on www.toi.in