Vaish Associates (VA) has promoted nine associates to salaried partnership levels in its Delhi, Mumbai and Gurgaon offices as part of a comprehensive restructuring programme that includes introduction of hierarchy based designations.

The partnership tally at the firm now stands at 12 having earlier consisted of equity partners Ajay Vohra, Vinay Vaish in Delhi and Bomi Daruwala in Mumbai.

Vaish managing partner Ajay Vohra explained: “We have been deliberating this restructuring for some time as we wanted to offer our key practitioners a more inclusive and participatory role in the management of the firm.

With the broad based management participation, the firm would be able to enhance its service delivery capabilities and develop new practice areas more aggressively.”

“The current reconstitution sends the right signals not only to the other associates aspiring to be future partners in the firm but also to the clients, business associates and foreign counterparts,” added partner Vinay Vaish.

Partner in-charge of Mumbai Bomi Daruwala said: “With our attorney strength currently at 85, a need was felt for introducing additional partners. The newly inducted partners will participate in the management and growth of the firm.”

In Delhi the firm has promoted Rupesh Jain and Neeraj Jain from the direct tax team, where the latter also practices transfer pricing.

Rupesh Jain’s agenda is to ramp up the transfer pricing practice of the firm and recruit more lawyers in that team while he also wishes to expand the firm’s Bangalore office.

Head of indirect tax Shammi Kapoor, head of corporate law practice Satwinder Singh and head of intellectual property (IP) practice Vijay Pal Dalmia are the other new partners in the Delhi office.

Head of the firm’s Gurgoan office Hitender Mehta has also been elevated as partner.

Meanwhile, the lawyers promoted in Mumbai office are corporate law practitioners Hemant Puthran, Martand Singh and Sandhya Iyer. Singh and Iyer also look after infrastructure and banking and finance work respectively.

Martand Singh noted that most of the departmental heads have been elevated as partners but there are a few heads who’ll continue at the heads of their divisions without being so inducted.

Post qualification experiences in terms of length of service rendered both inside and outside of the firm was an important consideration for the firm, observed Singh.

“We’re going to create three levels within associate level - base associate level, senior associate level and principal associate level and then partners,” he added.