Underlining the significance of “a small flap of little pocket” in a senior advocate’s gown, which was used by the clients to place fees for the services of the advocate, the Delhi High Court has directed Madhya Pradesh to pay the pending dues of a senior advocate who represented them in the Supreme Court.Justice Sachin Datta was hearing a plea of a senior advocate who claimed that he had not been paid since 2019 for his appearances on behalf of Madhya Pradesh State before the Supreme Court.The high court was of the view that the relationship between counsel and the clients was “founded on honour and utmost good faith” and that state cannot “retain the benefit of proceedings in which the petitioner represented it, while simultaneously disowning his very engagement”.“The State is expected to be a model litigant. Its defence in these proceedings has instead exemplified bureaucratic passing of the buck, with each department and instrumentality disclaiming responsibility and pointing to another, while the admitted beneficiary of the petitioner’s services declines to pay. Such conduct deserves to be strongly deprecated,” the August 31 order read. Justice Sachin Datta was of the view that the state cannot be expected to behave like an unscrupulous litigant.In 2019, the Supreme Court was hearing a batch of cases related to the interpretation of a Section of the Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act. The lead case came out of the judgment of the Madhya Pradesh High Court, and in one of the cases, advocate Harsh Parashar (Standing Counsel, State of Madhya Pradesh) had appeared before the Supreme Court.Also read | ‘They can’t remove me as AG’: Meghalaya Advocate General on expulsion from bar rollsThe state alleged that the counsel had sent a letter to the relevant authorities, seeking instructions for engaging a senior advocate on behalf of the state in the Housing Board matter, and forwarded the fee structure of a particular senior advocate. It came on record that the hearing before the Supreme Court started in October 2019 and the senior advocate claimed that “upon a personal request made by the then Chief Secretary of the State and the then Principal Secretary (Law)”, he agreed to appear for the State.It came on record that the senior advocate appeared for the State on 14 dates of hearing, and on December 1, 2019, the senior advocate raised 35 fee bills totalling Rs 1.76 crore, regarding the conferences and appearances in cases.Story continues below this ad‘No formal engagement’Senior advocates Manish Vashisht, Ashish Mohan and June Chaudhri appeared for the senior advocate and submitted that the state had always been aware of his name being there in the order sheets of the case but had still not taken any action to get the name removed. The counsel contended that since the cases were taken up suddenly by the Supreme Court, there had been no time to issue a formal engagement letter and that the senior advocate had conveyed his fee to the standing counsel before the hearing of the cases had started.Senior advocate Anil Kaushik, appearing for the state, argued that no formal appointment order was ever issued by the Law and Legislative Affairs Department of the state to engage the senior advocate.‘Genuine threat’The high court was of the view that “a senior advocate cannot thrust his own appearance upon a party in the Supreme Court; his appearance can be recorded only through, and upon the instructions of, the Advocate-on-Record of that party” and it was an “inescapable inference” that the name of the senior advocate was given on each such date to be mentioned in order, by the state’s representatives.Also read | Orissa High Court cites Kafka, Shakespeare to slam Cuttack’s endless pothole nightmareAccording to the high court, “the absence of a written appointment order in the state’s records is a reflection on the state’s own record-keeping and internal processes; it is not a circumstance which can be put against counsel” who was, in fact, engaged and put up to argue before the Supreme Court by the state’s own officers.Story continues below this adThe high court observed that “ethical infractions (which are increasingly oft cited) in dealings between senior counsel and their instructing advocates threaten to undermine the traditions and pose a genuine threat to the structure of the legal profession itself”.The high court allowed “a single appearance fee” of Rs 6.05 lakh for each day of “recorded appearance” in the court and did not accept the claim of conference fee. Accordingly, the State of Madhya Pradesh was directed to pay a sum of Rs 78.65 lakh with interest at the rate of 9 per cent per annum to the senior advocate.