Law officers' appointment quashed

LUCKNOW: The high court on Monday quashed the appointment of 15 state law officers appointed by the Mayawati government.
The order was passed by a division Bench comprising Justice Vishnu Sahai and Justice Kamal Kishore while partly allowing a public interest litigation (PIL) filed by a city lawyer SN Srivastava.
The PIL challenged the appointment of law officers, who conduct cases on behalf of the government, on the ground that those appointed as brief holders and standing counsel did not fulfill the eligibility criteria of five years and ten years of practice at the bar, respectively, as provided in the LR manual.
The state government had contended that the provisions of the LR manual "are only guidelines and instructions for the conduct of the legal affairs of the state ... and are not statutory rules".
The court, however, said that "we do not dispute that the state had discretion in appointing lawyers as state counsel but we are not prepared to accept that the said discretion was unfettered, unbridled and untrammelled."
The court also rejected the state government''s submission that "the provisions contained in the LR manual are merely guidelines."
On the point of maintainability of the PIL as raised by the advocate general, that the petitioner had no locus standi to file this PIL and that "he was an interloper and a mere busy-body", the court said "where an injury is caused to public and there is dereliction of duty by the public authority and where the action of a public authority is not within the four corners of law it would be open for a citizen to prefer a writ petition under the caption of Public Interest Litigation."
"It should be remembered that the state counsel are paid from public exchequer, wherein money comes through taxes realised from the public. It is because of this, as also because public has a vital stake in the administration of justice that it would be open for a member of public to approach this court. It should be borne in mind that if persons lacking in the requisite length of practice prescribed by the LR Manual are appointed as state counsel, the state is likely to lose cases and the casualty would be the administration of justice," the court added.
The court while allowing and partly dismissing the PIL upheld the appointment of Shariq Abbas Zaidi, Vivek Saran, Syed Ali Murtaza, Ram Prakash Ram Rajbhar, Rajendra Prasad, Jyotendra Verma, Vijai Prakash Dwivedi, Ram Kumar Maurya and Sunil Kumar Chaudhari as legal.
Those whose appointments were quashed were: Shashank Shekhar Singh, Ms Vishnu Priya, Shashi Kant Rai, Ajit Ray, Gaurav Kakkar, Ajai Kumar Misra, Sheel Kumar Ojha, Vijai Shanker Misra, Ujjwal Singh, Abhinav N. Trivedi, Prashant Arora, Surendra Kumar, Ms Anita Shukla, Brijesh Kumar and Madhumita Bose.